Legs Talk: Jenny Halpern Prince MBE

Which bit do you go into? Do you go up by Pen Ponds?

I do. I go up there, Kingston Gate, I go all around Richmond and I actually think of my mum who recently passed and we used to go on lovely walks there together, and so I really kind of like, take a little bit of space out to be able to do that. And I find that the walking is quite meditative and it’s really lovely to be able to just sort of hang out there with the dog.

What gets you dancing?

Well, you certainly need good legs to be able to get going with some dancing, so therefore, I love using all of your products. I mean, so much to be able to make sure that I can stay in shape to be able to do some good old podium dancing to some great songs like Beyoncé, I don’t know, Bruno Mars, you name it, I am up there on the dance floor within a flash.

Have you got a leg icon?

My leg icon totally is Elle Macpherson, who actually I saw recently and still looks as unbelievable as ever.

What songs make your legs dance or get you moving to walk or exercise?

I do love Texas Hold ‘Em by Beyonce from her new country album. I’m loving it at the moment, I always do some dancing around when it's playing.  

Anything really by Beyoncé, she really just gets everyone up to dance. Her show last year was so fun and I don’t think there was a moment I wasn’t dancing! She’s a very motivating woman.

Tell us more about the Lady Garden Foundation. Was there a particular trigger that encouraged you to bring it about that you're happy to tell us about?

There were a couple of things really, one of the things is that I have a personal reason for doing it because I had pre-cancerous cells in my cervix when I was 20 years old. And due to the for-sight of my mum taking me to the doctor, because I did have some spotting, I then got that lasered out.  That was very early on and I managed to eradicate that at the time, but then I had to have a check every single year since then. So that is one of the reasons.

The second thing is that we had a long journey trying to have children. Twelve years to produce three children, so there was lots of IVF and difficult scenarios involved in that and ending up with surrogacy with all three of them.

On the other side of things, a couple of my very close girlfriends lost their mothers to ovarian cancer. We all decided that we wanted to be able to set up something that would be in their honour as well as the honour of lots of women who have lost their lives too early.

Unfortunately, one of our biggest supporters, Emily Plane, died last November at the age of 28. She got misdiagnosed at 22 and she had stage 4 ovarian cancer by the time she was diagnosed at 23. It keeps us going and keeps us very motivated and passionate about what we do because we know we are here to save lives.

It’s a huge achievement, alongside everything else you and the other founders do, but is there one single thing you’ve done with the Foundation that you’re most proud of?

I think the one thing that makes me super proud is when I hear of women who have said that they have gone out and got a smear test based on the fact that they attended our Family Challenge or came to a lunch or a gala, and they say they did find something, and they got it early. So that is very empowering, and it really does mean that we are making people check themselves, are much more aware of the signs and symptoms from an early age, right from the teens where we’ve done things with our education campaign at universities. We started at one university and then went to 14 last year. Our aim is to go to 20 in September this year.

So I think that one thing I’m most proud of is spreading awareness. We can eradicate these gynaecological cancers, especially cervical cancer. There is absolutely no doubt that with everyone taking an HPV vaccination at the right age and regularly attending their smear test, it should go. It really should.

Right, last, your running shoes for the challenge on Saturday: what make and why?

I usually wear Nike; I do love them. But at the same time, I am a big fan of four-to-five-inch heels! My poor legs over the years have been challenged and I’d say definitely got some knee issues going on but it's not going to deter me! I will continue to be able to wear them always to a party and I have a great night out with heels on.