It's mainly reported as a TV issue, but even more so it's our political leaders who reveal their youth and inexperience
Don't confuse Hosni Mubarak, 82, with David Dimbleby, 72. Everyone's glad Hosni's gone, but the BBC seems pretty anxious to keep David in contractual charge of Question Time and ? who knows? ? of the next election too. Unhappy about not presiding over the royal wedding? Anxious about too many trips to Glasgow? Never mind, Mr D. You're authoritative, experienced, still near the top of your game? But (irate noises off) you're also a man!
So, in a trice, we're back to the parallel ruckus where Angela Rippon, 66, Arlene Phillips, 67, and Miriam O'Reilly, 53, bulk large ? the row about how women TV presenters get retired early while men go on and on. Why on earth should David Dimbleby be indefinitely preserved when Moira Stuart, 61, is toast? Why should John Humphrys, 67, keep his place in the sun when Anna Ford, 67, sits out in the cold? That sad-seeming figure in wellies on a lonely hillside is Selina Scott, 59. Cue sundry assorted -isms and -ersms. But also prepare to notice an even more dotty dislocation.
David Dimbleby, quizzing ministers on Question Time, is older than anyone in the cabinet. Only Ken Clarke, 70, comes close. Kirsty Wark, 56, is older than Theresa May, 54. Jeremy Paxman, at 60, can play positively avuncular to Iain Duncan Smith, 56. Nick Robinson, 47, might have mentored Jeremy Hunt, 44, if he'd stayed on in Conservative politics. Jim Naughtie, 59, tops Eric Pickles at 58. Jon Snow, 63, and Andrew Neil, 61, are the kind of veterans only Vince Cable and George Young can compete with.
Even the younger female ranks of the TV have a few years on their Whitehall brothers and sisters. Fiona Bruce, 46, easily outscores David Cameron, 44, and Nick Clegg, 44. The queen of the breakfast sofa, Sian Williams, 46, can pull rank on Michael Gove, 43, and all education, too. Sophie Raworth, 42, is still up and coming on television, but Baroness Warsi, 39, may not have much further to go. Julia Bradbury, remember, was the younger Countryfile model who replaced Miriam O'Reilly. At 40 she is a year older than our chancellor of the exchequer and two years older than his chief secretary. She walks round Windermere for a living; they do their sweaty best to run the economy.
There's a serious point here among the birthday bashes ? a point which resonates as this coalition trundles anxiously along. Television, pursued by furious columnists, is berated for sidelining its women stars too early. If they look too old, then they are too old! It's a grisly male conclusion. But Westminster gets through its own government stars at a far faster rate. Unless you're remarkably lucky, then (like Brown and Blair) you're finished long before you're 60. The job just seems to eat you up.
That is not quite how the rest of the democratic world runs things. Sarkozy and Merkel are both 56 (older than Tony Blair when he departed, three elections won). As a matter of jolting fact, Carla Bruni, 43, is two years older than Ed Miliband. Barack Obama at 49 boasts more hair but not fewer years than William Hague. Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, is a full decade more seasoned than George Osborne (in a cabinet whose average age is 55). Hillary Clinton is 63, just like Mitt Romney. India and China would scoff at such youthful contenders for power.
Now, of course ? as Silvio Berlusconi, 74, shows ? mere age doesn't bring wisdom, and too much experience of the wrong kind spells constant trouble. But there are jobs for the boys and jobs for someone more savvy, more seasoned, more shrewd. Osborne and Alexander are too damned young for the gravity of the crisis they invoke. Cameron and Clegg talk big societies from small experience. Not been there, not done that. The difficulty is that Snow, Paxo and the interrogation squad matured through other crunches. The problem is that David Dimbleby sometimes sounds more like a prime minister than the one we've got.
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