BARELY BELIEVABLE; Naked Lia's a star at.

Forget growing old gracefully. The latest way to celebrate the onset of the big five-0 is to shed your clothes - in public.

Celebrity cake-maker Jane Asher set the shock trend by posing starkers - bar a discreetly placed newspaper - for last month's Esquire magazine.

She was joined by Felicity Kendal, also 50 this year. She wrapped herself around a blue pole, wearing nothing but slingback shoes.

Jerry Hall, no spring chicken either, wasn't missing out. Cushioned perhaps by being 10 years younger, she let it a good deal hang out for the June edition of Vogue.

Fiona Fullerton, also 40 this year, chose Esquire. She posed in her living room wearing nothing but a painted cobra.

The motto: if you've got it, flaunt it. And clearly all these women still have.

But you don't have to be famous to bare all and be beautiful at 50 - as Lia Beldam proves.

We asked the Swiss-born beauty consultant from London, also 50, to follow the stars' lead and toss aside her clothes and her inhibitions.

And she was delighted to oblige.

"I don't mind posing naked at all," she said as she draped around a pole, Felicity Kendal-style.

"I am more confident about my body now than I was when I was 20.

"At 50, women don't take their bodies so seriously any more. They don't expect them to be perfect. So many other things are more important," says Lia, who has an eight-year-old son.

"It sounds conceited, but I have no qualms about taking my clothes off because I'm fairly happy with my body.

"I wouldn't do it if I wasn't. I'd be too embarrassed. And I would only do tasteful shots - nothing that I wouldn't want my mother to see.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with posing naked if you look as good as Jane Asher and Felicity Kendal."

Lia wasn't entirely happy to imitate Jerry Hall's pose though. "I can't understand why she was wearing a bra. And her pulled-down knickers made it look tacky because that's a man's striptease fantasy.

"Frankly, I felt more comfortable totally nude than posing in knickers. But unlike Jerry I prefer not to show my pubic hair in pictures.

She thought, however, Jane Asher's picture was very tasteful. "Her legs looked okay. I've seen her out shopping - she has a fantastic figure."

Lia reckons that part of her own good fortune is being tall. "I'm 5ft 10in - and my legs are still good," she says.

"There's no reason why a woman should be ashamed to pose naked at 50. If she's not proud of her figure she should get herself together - eat a proper diet and take some exercise."

Psychotherapist and forty-something feminist Susie Orbach agrees.

"Women have redefined what it is like to be 40 and now they are redefining 50," she says. "This is the first generation to break the mould."

Dr Dorothy Rowe, 65, psychologist and writer, believes that celebrities have their own motives.

"They do it to get publicity, to show they're still up to it, and because they get paid.

"I remember reading that Felicity Kendal was putting a lot of work into reshaping her body. Now she wants to show it off.

"She has been appearing naked on stage for some time. This is just an extension of that.

"There's been quite a change in the way women are seeing themselves as they get old.

"Pictures like this prove that women in their 40s and 50s don't just disappear into dumpiness and obscurity."

Jo Brand's View

- Page 10