Rob Crossan

A middle-aged man’s guide to ageing gracefully

Clarkson and cocaine are out; modern music and martinis are in

  • From Spectator Life
[Alamy]

Middle-aged men might be feeling persecuted at the moment. But we bring so much of the opprobrium upon ourselves. The MasterChef host Gregg Wallace has, it should be remembered, not been charged with any crime. But the allegations of his inappropriate, predatory and downright cringe-worthy behaviour towards women have inspired the kind of reaction among my male colleagues and friends that I haven’t heard the likes of since the arrival of David Brent and The Office some 20-plus years ago.

Nobody finds your Tommy Cooper impression funny because the only other person old enough to remember Tommy Cooper is outside hectoring a stranger about the smoking ban

‘You don’t understand, Rob,’ said the editor of the magazine I worked for at the time. ‘As a boss, I’m terrified watching every episode. I always think that Brent is going to do something or say something where I think “I’ve done that”.’

Fast-forward two decades and it seems many men of a certain age are plagued by a similar fear of recognising themselves in the stories about Wallace – not only those who genuinely have something to feel guilty about, but also generally well-meaning blokes who would be horrified to learn that a female in their workplace or social circle regards them as a middle-aged creep.

I’m 46 years old and so am entering the Indian summer/early autumn of my years. I’m no paragon of virtue and physical virility myself: I’m divorced, don’t live with my current partner and have legs that ache after around two minutes of standing up in a pub these days. But what I’ve noticed over the years – from observing my male brethren in action and, more importantly, from listening to what the women I encounter have to say – is that it’s actually ridiculously easy to not be a Gregg Wallace type. But I’ve also noticed that some of my male friends have needed a little bit of nudging.

So, in the spirit of festive giving, here’s my six-point plan to ageing gracefully as a middle-aged man:

1. Do keep your waistline relatively trim – and your music tastes relatively contemporary

Everything about ageing gracefully, both physically and mentally, spans out from these two core points. In short, if you don’t subscribe to the above then you’re the podgy Neil Young fan – and women don’t want to hang out with, let alone flirt with, that guy.

You don’t need a gym membership: if all you want to do is lose the belly fat then you can achieve this by diet alone in four to six weeks. Simply replace the bread in your cupboard with rice cakes and when you want a snack have a few of those with hummus, spinach leaves and some mackerel or herring. Ditch the cereal and eat porridge with honey or Greek yoghurt with nuts, raisins and blueberries. Eat lots of avocados, lots of scrambled eggs and plenty of tuna. When you want a drink, make a martini or pour a glass of champagne as they’re the tipples with the lowest calories. Limit your drinking days to two a week, eat as above and, I promise, the weight will fall off your middle without you so much as reaching for a squash racquet.

As for music, there’s no need to start going clubbing (most venues are closed anyway as Gen-Z stays in to scroll through TikTok of an evening), but you should ask yourself: do I think that the 1970s/80s/90s (delete as applicable) was the golden age of music because it genuinely was? Or is it just that this was the only era when I was actually open to listening to new music? Once you’ve decided that the latter is probably the most truthful answer then start paying for Spotify and stop playing music from ‘back in my day’. Need some help? OK, listen to An Evening With Silk Sonic (the 70s funk sound will be comfortingly familiar), then keep the party going with Hit Parade by Roisin Murphy before you recline with Emails I Can’t Send by Sabrina Carpenter. There’s nothing to scare the horses here – and once you open your mind to new music, so many of the other worst excesses of mimsy middle-aged male sadness trickle away.

2. Don’t take cocaine at dinner parties

Skip this entry if you’re already appalled at the prospect. But so many forty-, fifty- and even sixty-somethings still seem to think that the way to cling on to their youth is to snort some lines off a kitchen table after a three-course meal with friends. Some might argue there is an age when taking drugs is the gateway to quite a few awesome things. But those days are over. Taking cocaine after 45 just looks incredibly seedy in the eyes of anyone younger who may be watching.

Also, it’s hysterically hypocritical to complain about crime in your area and then lean into the mirror with your credit card. Sorry to sound sanctimonious but the county lines wars are being waged over who gets the right to supply cocaine to people like us. Youthful narcissism and a subsequent disregard to this truism is forgivable. But us older men should know better.

3. Don’t look up to Jeremy Clarkson

Idolising Jeremy Clarkson is a folly of Ceausescu’s palace type proportions when it comes to ageing well. Many men seem to believe that, because Clarkson has a hairdo like an arthritic cloudburst and wears stonewash denim and leather jackets with an elan last seen in 1980s West German nightclub owners, it’s perfectly OK to mimic the look then recline with a self-satisfied middle finger aimed towards everything younger and prettier. 

Woe betide us. Nobody has aged worse than Clarkson. And this is borne out by the fact that it’s only people of his chromosome who actually like him. Women figured out long ago that not only is Clarkson not a man of the people (he was educated at Repton, for goodness’ sake) but he’s also a saliva-flecked comfort blanket for men who think complaining about the price of beer is an excellent conversation starter with the opposite sex. Reading Clarkson, watching Clarkson and, good lord, dressing like Clarkson is a fast track to a land of tragic solitude. And you’ll get there faster than any vehicle that has ever appeared on Top Gear.

4. Don’t make ‘dad jokes’

Peter Kay can make dad jokes. You can’t. Chiefly because you’re not on stage in front of thousands of adoring fans. No, you’re at an office drinks event and you’re beginning to wonder why nobody thinks your Tommy Cooper impression is funny. The reason is that there’s only one other person in the room old enough to remember who Tommy Cooper was, and he’s outside hectoring a complete stranger about fracking and the smoking ban.

Ageing well means accepting that an ever-increasing amount of the people you work with or meet at parties are not plugged into your cultural references. The tip to getting around this is simple: if someone you’re talking to claims they haven’t heard of, let’s say, ’Allo ’Allo!, Arthur Scargill or Frederick Forsyth, don’t spend ten minutes explaining who and what they are. This is a party, not an ‘educate the young about the glorious things that happened when I was your age’ seminar. Try listening to other people instead. And don’t despair that the people you’re surrounded by haven’t heard of Peter Cook. Envy them. They’re also of a generation that didn’t experience thalidomide, Frank Bough and Happy Eater.

5. Don’t cling to the myth that all younger women really, deep down, want an older man

Yes, some women may well want that – but it’s likely the older man they have in mind is Jon Hamm, not you. Deal with it.

6. Do take ‘no’ for an answer

Finally, to make absolutely sure that nobody ever accuses you of the type of behaviour Gregg Wallace is being investigated over, remember this one thing. Women are stronger than us. They experience menstruation and still go to work (if men had periods, we’d get a statutory three days off a month), and they go through childbirth while we beg for a one-way trip to Dignitas when we have a verruca.

With this in mind, if a woman indicates she’s no longer interested in continuing a conversation then don’t keep talking, don’t implore, don’t persist and, whatever you do, don’t follow her across the room. If a woman is interested in you, she’ll let you know. Given that most women have long since found out the hard way that men are not very emotionally intuitive, this will happen in a manner that, you can be very sure, won’t pass you by.

So go forth, middle-aged men, and prosper. You have nothing to lose except your bootcut denim and your paperback copy of the Diddly Squat book.

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