I JUST LOVE BEING THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION

Recent septuagenarian Alan Cochrane enjoys nothing better than a rip-roaring party, especially when it’s a surprise bash held in his own honour

Alan Cochrane celebrates a big birthday in style

What’s the best way to approach old, or at least advancing, age? That’s long been my problem as birthdays seem to come round with alarming regularity.

After initially saying, on each and every occasion, that I’ve no intention of celebrating my approaching decrepitude, as the great day approaches the more my determination grows that I shall show the world that you can’t keep a good (or old) man down. Except that I never let on that that’s my plan.

Thus, are the halls of my home festooned with photographs of my life’s recent milestones. However, I suppose I should admit at this juncture that before I celebrate my latest anniversary I always check the Court Circular in the Telegraph to see who’s as old as I am or, in reality, to try and work out who’s been lying about their age.

Best of all, of course, is to see a celebrity (or even someone I know slightly) who is actually much older than me and who’s looking more than a bit haggard with the passing of all those years.

Still, I digress. Let’s get to the business of the party. My nearest and dearest worked out a long time ago that the more I say I have absolutely no interest in having a birthday party, the more they reckon that I’m desperate to have one.

However, what they also insist is that I have a plan which dictates that if I have to have a party then it must be kept a secret from me until the very last possible minute. I confess that I love to walk in on what I quickly realise are secret planning sessions and animated conversations that quickly come to a halt whenever I enter the room.

There are also those embarrassed silences from friends and colleagues when the subject of birthday celebrations raises its head.

However, this code of omertà between members of my immediate family can lead to sticky situations. There was an occasion – it was actually 20 years ago, which I find astonishing to recall – when my wife and I both booked the same room in the same pub for my party. Needless to say I didn’t know this, although my wife had found out.

As a result she instructed a friend to take me on a mini pub crawl while she assembled all her guests in the room I thought I’d booked. When I turned up I discovered, not surprisingly, that she’d invited virtually the same bunch of people as I had.

Guests are, of course, crucial to birthday parties and after long experience I have decided that it is essential to invite not just interesting people but also a wide range of ages. This serves two purposes: older guests make the host feel wonderful, given that he or she has a few years to go yet before he catches up with them. But the fact that younger people accept your invitation makes the host – well, certainly this one – feel that you’re still of interest to those who’re half, or more, your age.

This is especially important on the dance floor. Whether it’s reels or disco, and a not too formal atmosphere, a party without dancing just isn’t a party. Yes, speeches – providing they are short and sweet – must play a part, even if too many in-jokes that only the immediate family ‘get’ will almost certainly dampen the atmosphere.

But in my experience getting as many people as possible to take the floor makes for the best occasion. Leave it to the adults to decide the reels and country dances and the younger elements to choose the rest.

I’m enormously pleased to report that such is the paucity of decent contemporary popular music – in my opinion – that the poor dears in their teens, twenties and thirties generally play all the stuff that people of my advanced age just love to bop along to.

I apologise if I’ve waxed lyrical for too long about dancing; it’s probably just that the older I get the more surprised I am that I can still shake a leg with the best of my children and their pals. Indeed, as I write this my feet and legs are still aching from my latest birthday party exertions. An altogether marvellous occasion: kept secret till the last minute, of course, even if I knew something great was brewing.

“I love to walk in on secret planning sessions that quickly come to a halt when I enter the room