Paxo's beard. Dimbleby's tattoo. Spare us baby boomers trying to regain their lost youth By A. N. Wilson At the age of 75, David Dimbleby has had his right shoulder tattooed with a dark blue scorpion. He had it done while filming a TV programme about British sailors in the 18th century who came back from their voyages with tribal tattoos. It is easy to see why the director of the series thought this would make "good television." The Grand Old Man of the BBC, whose commentaries on state occasions - Royal weddings, Jubilees, laying of wreaths - recall the mellifluous voice of his even grander father, Richard Dimbleby, is filmed going into Vagabond tattoo parlour in East London, a place normally patronised by teenagers. In an interview with Radio Times to promote the programme, David Dimbleby tells readers that he is not the first grandee to get a tattoo. Winston Churchill had one: an anchor on his right arm. So did George V. But George V had his done while he was a young officer in the Royal Navy, not when he was an old man! It is easy to see why the director of the series thought giving David Dimbleby a tattoo would make 'good TV' David Dimbleby says initially he was against the idea because he thought he was too old. But then he agreed to have one (for £60) in a discreet position on his body so that few - except those with whom he goes swimming or shares a bathroom - are likely to see it. Well, who would deny an old man a bit of fun? That being said, his first instinct was the right one: he shouldn't have had it done. The trouble with tattooing old skin is quite simple. Whereas a young person's skin is firm, the oldie's skin is wrinkled. A tattoo of a girlfriend's name on a young man's bottom, as smooth and clear as paper, is one thing. But that same man, no longer young, will find it embarrassing when that girlfriend is an ex-girlfriend and that bottom more like crepe paper. If Dimbleby's tattoo were a one-off incident, we could not mind so much, but it is part of a disturbing trend. Last year, Lady Steel, the wife of former Liberal Party leader David Steel, did the same. Aged 70, she had a pink jaguar tattooed onto her left shoulder. Jeremy Paxman, meanwhile, returned from his summer holiday sporting a beard to present BBC2"s Newsnight. He probably thought it was as sexy as the designer-stubble of a 30-year-old. While from his side of the camera, it makes him feel young; from our side of the TV screen, it makes him look like a silly old man trying - failing - to recapture lost youth. Previous generations of oldies accepted the grim fact that their bodies had been transformed by the cruel passage of time. The huge majority did the decent thing and covered up their wrinkly, creaking old frames as decently as possible. Jeremy Paxman probably thought his beard was as sexy as the designer-stubble of a 30-year-old The very rich, and the very fantastical, waged war on the process with dyes, nips and tucks, make-up and plastic surgery. The American essayist Gore Vidal memorably described President Reagan - when alive - as "a triumph of the embalmer's art." Joan Collins seems to be keeping alive this somewhat macabre approach to the ageing process. You could no more put an age on her "look" than you would guess the age of a waxwork in Madame Tussaud's. The Dimbleby approach, though, is very different. Sadly, it mirrors what so many of his generation, and slightly younger, are doing as they totter towards the grave. Those aged 55 to 80 seem to have a quite different approach to ageing than any other generation in remembered history. These spoilt baby boomers, who never knew the anxiety of university tuition fees or unemployment or the mortgage worries which plague today's young generation, have Had It All. So when age creeps up on them, they conceitedly pretend that it is simply not happening. Even ailments which previous generations considered more or less inevitable - such as prostate cancer and dementia - can, this generation breezily hope, be cured by pharmaceutical advance. So, on with the party! I stopped counting the number of my friends who, when passing the age when they were entitled to a free bus pass, told me, as though they had just invented the phrase, that "60 is the new 40." The simple, factual answer to this cliché is: "No it isn't, you silly old codger." I cheered encouragingly when my actor friend Jonathan Cecil turned 70 and he told me - for he was depressed and weighed down by the march of time - that "70 is the new 80." You can spot these silly old codgers everywhere. The arrival of spring, with its coming of the swallow and the bursting of the leaves, still cheers us all up. But these joys are now attended by the miserable prospect of walking through our parks and along our beaches to find them thickly populated with "active-retired" people who take the Dimbleby-Paxman approach to ageing. For these men and women, their 60s are the new 20s - or even the new teens. Jonathan Cecil, here in the film Fakers, said he was depressed and weighed down by the march of time when he turned 70 The rest of us are subjected to the sight of leathery 70-year-old women in bikinis, their puckered arms reminiscent of those reminders of mortality which once adorned medieval tombs warning what would befall us all as our sinful flesh decayed. Or you see baby-boomer generation men wearing shorts and saying they feel no different aged 65 than they did aged 25. But the rest of us can see their pot bellies, their scaly shins, and their varicose-veined calves resembling a relief map of the rivers of France. Older generations knew that a man's neck, after the age of 40, is not a pretty sight. Yes, it was comic to go into a suburban pub and see the men in their cravats and blazers at the bar. But the cravats had a purpose: to conceal the fact that 90 per cent of older men develop necks which resemble the recently strangled gullets of broiling fowl. Since ties have all but died out even among senior statesmen at international summits, the rest of us suffer the sight of these scraggy necks. The obligatory photo-call of foreign ministers now looks nothing so much like a poulterer's window, where sad old fowl hang waiting to be made into coq au vin. Mary Berry said, whereas the younger women presenters could wear T-shirts, hers must be long-sleeved. She did not wish to reveal bingo-wings to the viewing millions The cliché "Grow Old Disgracefully" began as rather a good joke - along with T-shirts emblazoned with the legend "I am spending all my children's inheritance." Now it has become wearisome. Of course it would be po-faced and humourless to suggest that old people should have nothing to do except join bridge clubs, or play bowls and bingo. I'm all for them having a whale of a time. Let the fun go on for as long as the pension holds out. However, while it is one thing to behave as if you are young, these men and women sure as heck do not look young. What is so embarrassing is the obvious lack of awareness that so many oldies - and that includes David Dimbleby - seem to have about what grotesque spectacles they present, dressed in young people's outfits, their backs tattooed and their beards untrimmed. Mary Berry was, as always, a heroine when she spoke to an interviewer about appearing as a judge on The Great British Bake Off. She, of course, is a very striking woman with an enviably slim figure and she looks very good in jeans. But, she said, whereas the younger women presenters could wear T-shirts, hers must be long-sleeved. She did not wish to reveal bingo-wings to the viewing millions. I'd applaud a series presented by Mary Berry telling older people how to dress - and how to conduct themselves. As well as teaching us to make the perfect Victoria sponge, she could restore a little common sense into the vain old nuts of those baby boomers who think we don't notice the bulging, the puckering, the blotchy, sagging shapes which age has cruelly given to their bodily frames. As a fellow oldie (aged 63!) who has no intention of ever having my back tattooed, I urge my contemporaries: Do please act your age.