Betty White: TV's golden girl on 63 years in showbusiness

"Why do people say 'grow some balls'? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding." If you happen to look this quote up, you'll see it attributed to notoriously sweet 90-year-old TV great Betty White. Only those words never passed her lips, and she'd quite like people to bear that in mind next time they see fit to quote it at her, as I have just done. "That's what I hate about Facebook and the internet," she sighs. "They can say you said anything. I never would have said that. I'd never say that in a million years."

So while White's not a fan of the internet – when I tell her there was an internet rumour a couple of years ago that she had died, she says, "Tell them that at 90 there's no need to get impatient, I'm hurrying as best as I can" – the internet is certainly a fan of Betty White. In January 2010, a Facebook campaign appeared with the sole aim of getting White to host Saturday Night Live. When the announcement was made that White would indeed host a forthcoming episode that May, the group had reached over half a million followers. She stole the scene in the perfunctory Sandra Bullock romcom The Proposal. Then she had cameos in Community and 30 Rock, did Letterman and Larry King, and visited the White House (no relation). For the youth of America – already gorged on re-runs of The Golden Girls on the Lifetime channel – the love affair with Betty White has only just begun.

While most waves of cultural nostalgia lean towards the ironic, there is genuine affection for White, a woman who embodies the slightly barmy but lovable grandmother figure we all secretly wanted as children, with the benefit of a softly sarcastic viewpoint that comes with a life well lived. In a TV landscape dogged by cynicism and emotional breakdowns, her charm, often masking a biting put-down, makes her re-emergence more satisfying.

There's a tenacity bubbling beneath those cotton-mix trouser suits. As a young woman, Betty so desperately wanted to act that she wrote her own high-school graduation play and gave herself the lead role. In 1949, after her burgeoning career had been interrupted by the war, she produced her first television series, Life With Elizabeth, before going on to play "neighbourhood nymphomaniac" Sue Ann Nivens in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She followed that with the lovably drippy Rose Nylund in The Golden Girls and a myriad of other characters before, after and in-between (she's received 20 Emmy nominations to date).

White puts her success down to a mixture of old-fashioned perseverance and the public's unending patience. "I think after 63 years in the business people grow up with you, and they have children and then they grow up with you," she explains over the phone from her home in LA. "They think you're a fixture, so I think they don't know how to get rid of me, to be honest."

'I don't go around thinking "Oh, I'm 90, I better do this or I better do that". I'm just Betty. I'm the same Betty that I've always been'

Unsurprisingly, White is old-school Hollywood. Her self-deprecation never allows her to come out and say that the main reason she's been around for so long is because she's completely brilliant at what she does, delivering comedic lines with an expert's timing and a knowing nod. It also means she doesn't "do" politics. A question about who she trusts least out of people who hate animals (Betty's on the board of directors at the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association) and Republicans is met with a friendly "I don't get political".

She's also an expert at politely batting away suggestions that the idea of employing a 90-year-old woman to say rude words may be the start and end point of some producers' ideas. I ask her if she ever finds the things she's asked to do now patronising, such as an SNL sketch that played on her repeatedly talking about her "dusty muffin" ("Many bakers from my era have dry or even yeasty muffins"), or an appearance on the song I'm Still Hot by singer Luciana which involved White rapping, "I may be a senior but so what, I'm still hot" surrounded by men in gold hotpants. "No, I have to admit, Michael, I don't, because I've had an audience of this demographic range for 63 years," she explains, making a point of saying my name, which she does throughout the interview. As for the men in gold hotpants: "I think everybody should have a hobby!"

She also makes a point of being able to veto anything she finds unsavoury on her hidden-camera show Off Their Rockers, which, during one episode, involves an elderly lady talking graphically about her sex life much to the horror of two young men sitting nearby. "Well, I didn't say we're always tasteful," she laughs, "but sometimes we go for the joke. I try to keep a pretty close eye on it." It exposes some people's attitudes towards older women and sex, I suggest, ie that it must be off the table once you reach 60. "Boy do they have a lot to learn," she laughs. "The fun is the reaction of the young people. They don't expect this to happen. Older people rarely get the fun of the pay off."

White's currently so busy with Off Their Rockers and her successful sitcom Hot In Cleveland that she's constantly turning down work. "The bottom line is, Michael, I'm blessed with good health. On top of that, I don't go around thinking 'Oh, I'm 90, I better do this or I better do that'. I'm just Betty. I'm the same Betty that I've always been. Take it or leave it."

BETTY'S BEST BITS

Life With Elizabeth (1953–55)
Co-produced by a 31-year-old White, Life With Elizabeth – which focused on the ordinary suburban life of a married couple – introduced her warm but biting comedic style and made her one of most powerful women in TV at the time.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973–77)
Betty played against type to imbue Sue Ann Nivens, the outwardly sweet presenter of The Happy Homemaker TV show, with a brilliantly sardonic undercurrent, undermining the show's titular star and generally being a bit of a bitch.

The Golden Girls (1985-91)
For seven glorious and critically acclaimed seasons, White played the widowed and endearingly naive Rose Nylund, whose convoluted and peculiar stories about her small-town upbringing clashed brilliantly with Bea Arthur's cynical Brooklynite, Dorothy. Cue an endless supply of confused facial expressions.

Screen Actors Guild Awards (2010)
Collecting the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award, White was humble and charming, opening her speech with, "Thank you from the bottom of my heart and from the bottom of my bottom." But it was co-star Sandra Bullock who got the full treatment. "Isn't it heartening to see how far a girl as plain as she is can go?"

Saturday Night Live (2010)
While the extended "dusty muffin" sketch spread a double entendre paper thin, it was White's acidic opening monologue that stole the show. "I didn't know what Facebook was," she mused of the online campaign to have her appear as host, "and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time."

Hot In Cleveland airs on Saturdays, 9am, Sony Entertainment Television (Sky 157/ Virgin 193)