Alexander Chancellor’s diary: Picking golden oldies, Ken Dodd, and the sadness of Jack Nicholson

An excellent test of character is a person’s response to being offered an Oldie of the Year Award. There have always been those to whom the word ‘oldie’ is in itself an embarrassment. When Richard Ingrams founded the Oldie magazine in 1992, he was warned by many that it would fail because of its name. Nobody wanted to be thought old, he was told, and therefore nobody wanted a magazine that would portray oldness as something to be proud of. Ingrams overcame most of these qualms with the humour and irony he brought to the magazine. Nevertheless, I was nervous when I had to telephone Lord Falconer, whom I had never met, to tell him he had been chosen for an Oldie award. Lord Falconer is a political heavyweight who served as Lord Chancellor in Blair’s government. Furthermore, since leaving office, he led a campaign to legalise assisted dying, a cause for which he might reasonably have expected recognition from a magazine called the Oldie. But the award I was offering him was not for any political achievement. He had been a heavyweight in every sense, and I told him he had been chosen as ‘Oldie Slimmer of the Year’ for having shed five of his 16-and-a-half stone. This is, of course, a considerable achievement, fully deserving of an award, but I feared that a politician of his stature might not see it that way. But Charlie Falconer came up trumps. He sounded over the moon, as if he had just been given some signal honour, and accepted with alacrity and enthusiasm. What a splendid man!