Oldest Swingers In Town

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It’s a cliché, but true I guess, that there’s no fool like an old fool - and anyone who thinks that means that this week’s blog is going to be autobiographical is being mean, hurtful and is going to the bad fire.

The old fools I’m referring to are the increasing number of male pensioners who, as Billy Ocean once said “run around town like a fool and think that they’re groovy”. And I’m not just talking here about guys who refuse to grow up – nothing wrong with that, it’s part of the gender description - but rather about those oldest swingers in town who enjoy being photographed with a Barbie on their arm.

Salman Rushdie, Mick Jagger and Peter Stringfellow have always been at it, trading in the current girlfriend when her braces come off, but now we have the bloke from Tyne and Wear who was this week accused of stealing a priceless Shakespeare portfolio. He is in his Fifties while his girlfriend is twenty one. And I really expected better of Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood who entered rehab this week after disappearing for a few days with a girl almost old enough to use her pink Pay As You Go phone to call the Tooth Fairy and ask for a delivery of wisdom teeth.

And what about Gary Lineker whose girlfriend is the same age as my plasma TV or Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik who is dating one of the Cheeky Girls. Making love to an odd looking, charmless, strange faced individual must be upsetting but, fair play, Lembit Opik managed it for over a year even though he’s old enough to be her father’s older mate.

At least Hugh Heffner has the decency to keep three or four on the go at once so their collective ages add up to his, but I’m left wondering just why all these old guys go so easily from slippers to slappers. The simplistic answer is that the guy gets the prestige of other blokes mentally high fiving him because he got a dolly bird with a beautiful, flawless, gravity defying cleavage while she gets access to the large, well used, battered old wallet and bank account. I think it’s called tit for tat.

I have summer bedding plants in my garden that are older than some of these girls and I just cannot imagine what these odd couples find to talk about. I’m guessing that she’ll chat about false boobs when he mentions his false teeth, she’ll speak of hip hop to divert the conversation from his hip op, and then she’ll mention Jay Z while he’s showing off his LayZee recliner. But what then?

There must be a few embarrassing silences and misunderstandings. When she says she wants a Wii does he hand her the chamber pot from under his bed?

I have to confess that I once went out with a twenty year old, but I was nineteen at the time and so it defeats me what is going through Ronnie Wood’s mind just now. His pal Mick Jagger is notoriously careful with his millions and I wonder if Ronnie is attracted by the thought of buying cheap presents from Clare’s Accessories. Is he relishing the money saved when the girlfriend travels to see him for half price on the bus, and what about the pounds saved on restaurants with the promise that their happy meals together will be at McDonalds?

It seems Ronnie is going out of his way to affirm the stereotype of us men as daft old gits who fall for flattery every time. Not that I’ve ever been flattered you understand, unless you count an ex girlfriend who told me one night at Glasgow’s Maestro’s nightclub that I was a great dancer. I had actually been burned on the arm by a cigarette waved around by a girl squashed up beside me on the disco floor and was stamping on it in temper to put it out.

I’d love to find a reason for Ronnie’s behaviour but I can’t. We could excuse his off piste adventure as a mid life crisis but, unless he’s going to live to be a thousand years old, the old charmer must have passed his mid life point when they discovered electricity. What a day that must have been when he plugged his lute in for the first time to work out the chord progressions of Greensleeves.

As she digs him, he digs the garden, and this relationship is a recipe for disaster with the mother of all arguments between them when Gardener’s World and Sabrina The Teenage Witch clash on TV. But perhaps Ronnie can turn to his old band compatriot Bill Wyman for advice. His mid life crisis led him to marry Mandy Smith who bought her wedding dress from Asda’s dressing up playtime range.

I realise this takes effort and it must be a struggle for these men pretending to be hip and trendy, learning all the latest band names and being able to tell their Dizee Rascals from their Ting Tings whilst knowing how to say the word posse without sounding like a Wild West sheriff. But as we get older God gives us wrinkles for a reason. We’re supposed to stay hidden away, lying flat, to stop gravity’s worst excesses whilst young people stagger home from clubs singing at the top of their voices. It’s practically the law.

Old and young don’t mix in romance so, guys, get over it. We’re not high fiving you, we’re laughing at you. And don’t tell me I am just jealous, because I’m not.

Well, maybe just a bit.