Paxman’s discovered the secret of eternal youth!

As insults go, it’s pretty damning. Jeremy Paxman has been described as ‘Jeremy Clarkson without the charisma’ by the publisher of the Mature times, a newspaper for the over-50s.

Paxman’s crime? He called the paper the ‘most unfashionable publication in Britain’, and then proceeded to describe its readers in the most unflattering terms.

‘Who wants to be called “mature”, like an old cheese?’ he thundered. ‘We all know that “mature” means: on the verge of incontinence, idiocy and peevish valetudinarianism. they might as well have named it the “surgical stocking sentinel”.’

Valetudinarianism, for those of you who don’t present university Challenge, means constantly banging on about your health.

Paxo went on to demand: ‘Why do the people who run these dreary publications assume that, apart from a cruise somewhere in the company of other virtual corpses, this sort of stuff is all we want?’

Mature times publisher Andrew silk hit back. ‘Mr Paxman,’ he wrote, ‘you have just insulted over 21 million people (yes that’s how many over-50s there are in the UK).’

He then accused Mr P of being in denial about his age — 66. On that point, at least, Mr silk is wrong. Paxo’s not in denial about his age — he’s just a baby boomer, aka the generation that never grew up. BABY boomers are pathologically incapable of defining themselves as old. it’s just not in their vocabulary — mainly because old age has not, nor will it ever, happen to people like them.

not since the Victorians has one generation shaped the world so completely according to their will — in this case, rewriting the very laws of time and nature.

now in their 60s and 70s, the postwar generation still grip the reins of power — political and cultural — and have no intention of letting go.

People such as theresa May, 59, who so deftly snatched no. 10 from under the noses of her younger rivals.

People like my parents, whose only concession to entering a combined 160th decade is to drink one bottle of wine a day instead of three.

think of Mick Jagger who, shrivelled as he is at 73, still finds the energy to belt out sympathy For the Devil while impregnating embarrassingly young women.

Or David Dimbleby, 77, who’s been presenting Question time since the Big Bang and will still be doing so at the Final Reckoning.

there’s no prising this lot off the rock of life. they will cling on until the bitter end — redefining boundaries as they crash headlong into each decade and out the other side.

i used to find this irrepressible self-belief, borne out of the boomers’ uniquely balmy circumstances — they got all the pensions and free education — rather annoying.

But as i approach 50 and the less- than- thrilling prospect of becoming one of the Mature times’s younger readers, i have come to rather appreciate it.

Getting old used to be about a slow, gradual decline, a measured applying of the brakes before coming to a doddery standstill.

Women like me would get rounder and greyer, start wearing sensible footwear and keep tins of biscuits for the grandchildren.

thanks to the baby boomers, there will be no need for any of that. they have at last discovered what Mankind has always searched for: the secret to eternal youth.

Which, it turns out, is not a pill, a potion or magic mirror. it is simply a state of mind, an all-consuming, invincible self- belief — and a stubborn refusal to accept what we all, deep down, fear: that somewhere (most likely in a factory in China) there is a pair of surgical stockings with our name on it.