It’s probably not what she expected but she has become the heroine of middle-aged mums everywhere.

Last week, Madonna, an assisted blonde, 45-year-old mum-of-two, excelled herself by performing a manoeuvre that looked like upside-down bicycling on stage before thousands of astonished and, it has to be said, envious fans.

It was the start of her Reinvention World Tour and female commentators were struck by her athleticism, with only the support bandages on her right arm and leg hinting at the physical pain Madonna must have gone through to get in shape for her first tour in five years.

One was moved to defend womenkind with the remarks that “a slender, 45-year-old mother doing gymnastics is not that rare a sight. The parks around here are full of them. Though not, admittedly, dressed in fishnet tights, thigh boots and a spangly corset”. Guardian writer Maureen Freely called her “the best friend an ageing bad girl could ever want.

“She never gets fat, she never gets tired, she never has the same hair colour two days in a row, and God help the man who stands in her way.”

The male critics, especially in her native America, were not as admiring, preferring to concentrate on the ditching of her old “sexuality” for a new found spirituality and political posturing.

Her version of John Lennon’s “Imagine” came in for a panning. “Madonna traded most of the old sexual teasing for social commentary, and she’s no Lennon, friends,” the LA Times commented acidly.

Source: Scotsman.com