Ref. 73063 Dance teacher Pat Bennett with a picture of her mother Margaret WHEN Melinda Messenger impersonated a pensioner for a TV show, little did she know that the character she created really existed.

The Swindon-born TV presenter and mum-of-three fooled her own mother into thinking she was a wrinkly OAP for the Channel Five show Age Swap.

Producers of the show told Avis Hyland that they were making a programme about her daughter's life and that OAP Margaret Doyle was the piano teacher who used to play at Melinda's childhood ballet lessons in Swindon.

And by pure coincidence it turns out that there may be some truth in the made-up character.

It turns out there really was a pensioner called Margaret who played the piano at Melinda's ballet lessons at the Estelle School of Dance in Ferndale Road.

Her daughter Pat Bennett, who runs the school, contacted the Adver after reading about 33-year-old Melinda's TV makeover.

Pat said: "I was really intrigued after reading the story to find out if Melinda based her character on my mother. But it turns out to be a coincidence.

"Melinda came to ballet classes at the school for a year when she was seven. And my mum, who was in her 70s at the time, used to play the piano at all the classes."

Margaret Bennett died in 1994 aged 85, and was so devoted to the school that she had continued to play there right into her 80s.

Pat said: "My mum suffered a stroke when she was 80 but she still came back and carried on playing after that.

"I think she would have been amused and flattered by this."

Pat remembers Melinda as a good dancer.

"Melinda was a pretty little thing not exactly what I would call an extrovert," she said.

"I would say she was a fairly quiet child."

Pat, 65, set up the school 40 years ago with just two pupils and now teaches 150 children. It is based at the Immanuel Church Hall in Upham Road.

Age Swap will be broadcast on November 5 at 10pm.

Diane Milne