‘Oh dear, you look like an old person,’ said Girl, greeting me in the interval of the Bach choir’s St Matthew Passion at the Royal Festival Hall. I took her point. Moments earlier I had been lamenting to the Fawn: ‘It seems like only yesterday when I had lovely long hair and you rode pillion to rock gigs on my Guzzi.’ And now here we were surrounded by music lovers of a noticeably certain age and not feeling at all out of place.

Still, it could be worse. At least I’m not Jonathan Ross. In my youth Wossie was a sort of role model. I coveted his fame, his cheeky chappy banter, his Jean Paul Gaultier suits. What could possibly be more delightful a career than being on TV, talking to movie stars and being paid lots of money for it? What I hadn’t realised then, as I do now, is that there’s a terrible price to be paid for signing that TV-celebrity pact. You are never permitted a dignified retreat from the limelight. As Exhibit A, I present: Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing.

The real reason the Guardian is so hostile to Gail’s

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All the worst people like the ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ definition

Ross didn’t need to do it. He........

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