Willie Donaldson, who died in 2005, has a claim to having had the best obituary sub-heading of any writer I know. ‘Wykehamist pimp, crack fiend and adulterer who created Henry Root and Beyond the Fringe’ was how the Telegraph memorably summed up his life. As readers of his biography, You Cannot Live As I Have Lived and Not End Up Like This, will know, all of the above was true.

Donaldson came to mind this week because of something a mutual friend once told me about him – that is his fondness for using the word ‘dead’ as a pejorative. While practising the vituperative arts, he would occasionally describe a politician whose reputation he had it in for as ‘the dead politician’ etc.

One of the few acceptable ways to dismiss an audience as inadequate is to describe them as ‘ageing’

One of the few acceptable ways to dismiss an audience as inadequate is to describe them as ‘ageing’

It is a general rule that to explain a joke is to destroy it. But we live in a literal age and so I suppose that it is worth pointing out that the reason this one works is that it carries the suggestion there is something about dying that can be used against a chap. As though we are in agreement that only an utter loser would go and die on top of all the other mistakes they might have made in their lives.

I thought of Donaldson’s joke because I have been marvelling about the un-humorous use of the word ‘ageing’ as a pejorative.

People who do not follow the dementing debate about the meeting point of........

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