The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
I’m over 50, not over the hill, so stop targeting me with patronising adverts
Ikeep getting adverts for erectile dysfunction. That or ways to avoid dementia. Algorithms think I’m going soft. The run-up to Christmas used to start with adverts for toy cars that could loop the loop or Kerplunk. Now I’m of an age where marketing thinks I dribble.
Stairlifts and walk-in baths are on offer everywhere. And ads for absorbent towels.
The curse for the Scottish man is that some time after 40 we magically expand.
I have the shoulders of a rugby pro on the legs of a chicken. My head has inflated to the classic Celtic ball, smooth on the top, furry on the bottom and perfectly round.
Age is tricky. Sure you get wisdom and cheaper insurance, but otherwise it’s all beige. And endless adverts for sensible trousers. Not slacks, which have gone the way of polyester shirts, but chinos in drab colours for looking casual on the quayside.
Lots of comfortable shoes too, the trainers for people who will never run again.
Christmas is a time of gifts.
For men, this has always been tortuous. Even as a child you’d get socks and pants. Make it to over 50 and they start to come reinforced. Capitalism has a fixed idea of the old. Comfortable clothes, furniture which doesn’t tax the knees and the promise of getting away to a beach.
Most ads for men over 50 are photographed by the sea. A metaphor for the liberation of age, perhaps. Or a nod to inevitable dampness. The ultimate reward is a cruise. Endless appeals to somewhere with lapping waves and palm trees – and they don’t mean Ullapool.
A destination where ships eject pollutants, carbon and the occasional passenger. But, one imagines, a good place to wear chinos.
Private Eye magazine usually does a very funny spoof of those advertising supplements which include things like heated slippers or facsimiles of General Montgomery’s moustache “with real hair”.
This used to be very amusing, until you realise reality has overtaken parody, and you are the target market.
One real advert boasts of a heated gilet. You charge it on the mains, put it on and walk around, like that kid in the old Ready Brek advert, glowing.
Do not miss out on the sensation of your kidneys slowly stewing whilst striding about in an electric jacket. I can’t help but feel if they added arms, the batterypowered heat panels might not be needed.
And for the man with more money than sense? There’s another newspaper advert for what to do if you have a pension portfolio of £250,000. It features a man with a naked torso and the tail of a seal. For ages I’ve wondered who would want to spend their pension on becoming halfman, half-sea mammal. The image of lounging on a beach, your private parts encased in rubber while your Celtic skin bubbles into cancerous lesions, is not attractive.
Only recently did I work out the guy was wearing a wet suit, undone at the top.
But I have been to public swimming pools and most over-50s already look like whales. Further, if you have £250,000 saved up, then do not be surprised if the rest of us steal your wallet while you cavort in the waves.
Capitalism doesn’t seem to have caught up with reality.
Perhaps there was a time when all the over-50s wanted was nothing more than wool and escape to the Caribbean, but I’m pretty sure that has passed.
There is a gap here, between the achievement of a working life and the options for growing old.
Marketing turns the over-50s into victims, of leaking bodies and infirmity. Well, you can stuff that up your turkey. Fifty-year-olds are perfectly able to research stairlifts, walk-in baths and helpful aids to unwanted leakage. We are not imbeciles.
What’s more, if you wear a wet suit, then any sea or beach is fine. We’ve got plenty of gorgeous ones in Scotland.
Which brings me back to Christmas. A Christmas advertising campaign offering something a bit more exciting wouldn’t go amiss.
The actor Alan Cumming recently said he’d try heroin when he was 80.
I have always thought robbing a bank would be fun. Given modern financial injustices, they seem like fair game. A “bank robber” kit would be something I’d buy. The only problem is that banks no longer have cash. I shall escape with a swag of leaflets instead, probably featuring a mature couple smiling on a beach.
After bank robbery, car chases seem fun. Just flooring the accelerator and whipping through traffic.
Or gun-runner for good causes, like Rick in Casablanca. A nightclub as a front for selfless heroism, aided by a dodgy roulette wheel and loyal piano player.
Famously, women shall wear purple when they get old. Men have no such inspiration, while grumpily morphing into the cushions.
Against this we must rebel.
Let this Christmas be the beginning of new joy, men, and shed your V-necks for freedom.
Mind you, I could do with some socks. Merry Christmas.
Actor Alan Cumming recently said he’d try heroin when he was 80