Extract
Fans of the late AA Gill will remember his life advice. Forty was crunch time. Don’t buy anything worth more than £1,000. “If you want to avoid a mid-life crisis,” he wrote, “then don’t buy one.” Getting past 60, however, was cool. It was where you got to “pick up the fruit of your life, the age when you start smoking again. Sixty is when you can offer opinions whether people want them or not.”
I’m well past 60, but I’ve been amazed at the response to some of my opinions here in the readers’ letters. Obviously only a few letters get published, but the one from a DA MP Ghaleb Cachalia a few weeks ago was extraordinary for its length and rage. I’d spotted him a few days before and remember wondering if he was chewing an Alka Seltzer.