AINE O’CONNOR

Looking good for whose age exactly?

After an early flirtation with reality TV in its infancy, I learned to hate it. I like Gogglebox and First Dates and people who agree to get married without ever meeting, they to me are more social experiment than reality TV. It’s those godawful contrived manipulative rubbishy money-spinners that play with people’s emotions that wreck my head. The one manipulative rubbishy money-spinner that plays with people’s emotions that I do like is I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! Even if I haven’t heard of most of the contestants I learn to love or loathe ‘em over the three weeks while they eat moose testicle and sleep in stinky hammocks. The elder lemons this year include actor Larry Lamb, 69, and maths whiz Carol Vorderman, 55. Much has been made of how good they both look, but always with the codicil, “for their age”. OK, I might be sensitive about it having heard that codicil myself on occasion and I suspect that were I 20, I would not only not hear it, or mind, but I’d probably say it. From my current perspective however I wonder don’t you either look good or not? Larry Lamb is a really attractive man. Carol Vorderman is a really attractive woman. Not for their age, they have always been, they still are, they just are. So do people say it to differentiate themselves? Looks good but not in my target category [because I’m much younger] or because they don’t want to look like a weirdo who fancies an older person? Because fancying an older person would be weird. I don’t fancy people of an older generation but neither could I fancy anyone of a younger generation. Justin Bieber, I can see he is pretty, but he’s young enough to be my child which is not erotic, and he doesn’t know enough stuff to be sexy for me. So I’m gonna say it, Justin Bieber looks good “for his age”.