At 80, you hold on and prepare for what's next The programme I was most happy to see again was my interview with Nelson Mandela, made immediately after his release from prison, when he had gone to meet up with ANC colleagues in Stockholm and we caught up with him there. I felt at the time, and still feel, that our conversation will be a lasting part of the long record of his life and achievements. The other one I love is the rather awkward, not to say gauche, interview I did with Marcel Duchamp, the inventor of conceptual art, who has left little behind him to help us understand what exactly he was up to. Well, here it was, as fully as he was prepared to explain. They show it sometimes at Tate Modern, and it pops up here and there in art documentaries. But it's funny how accidental and selective the choices history makes are. There is, for example, no record of a long interview with Harold Pinter. And so to 80... the birthday that marks the transition into later old age. From this point on, I notice, people stop pretending to be younger than their years and start deliberately drawing attention to their age, seemingly boasting that they have lasted so long and congratulating each other for still being here. It is certainly an age that finds most of us deep into retirement. The only other broadcasters I know still going are Nicholas Parsons, Bruce Forsyth and David Attenborough, each of them having perfected what they do over so many decades that there seems no reason they should ever stop. How many more generations of hippopotami can David Attenborough whisper with? There used to be the problem of when to leave the stage. Jimmy Young, you may remember, felt he was being pushed from what had become his slot on Radio 2. Even the august Alistair Cooke would have gone on delivering his Letter from America. But now that there are so many more channels and outlets, blogs and pods, it seems there's no pressure. David Attenborough turns up on Sky television; I pop up on Classic FM and am soon to embark on a Sky Arts series with Frank Skinner, no less. How's that for growing old gracefully? But that, of course, is never the full story. It's likely that anyone over 70 is consulting their doctor more than they once did. Plenty of us are having procedures and tests of various kinds, and with increasing frequency. I now know where the coffee stall is at London's UCH hospital and where to catch the bus to take me to Hampstead's Royal Free. The National Health Service is our friend and support, striving against increasing odds - in terms of cuts and reorganisation - to look after whoever walks through its doors and not asking them for a penny. We know our bodies are beginning to fail - initially in modest but detectable ways, and soon, no doubt, with greater impact. We have seen worlds and events that young people now talk about with awe and frequent misconceptions. Our time is passing and we know it. We will hold our own as long as we can. But we are also readying ourselves for what is to come.