ANOTHER VOICE
Useful things to be done with a bare bodkin
AUBERON WAUGH
as it less than a fortnight ago — on 4 August — that we were all celebrating the Queen Mother's 91st birthday? I say 'we all', but of course a journalist has no means of controlling who reads his stuff. It is pos- sible that some of those who read this page in order to spot grammatical errors or spelling mistakes were not aware of the event at all, or that the Queen Mother was still alive, or even that she had ever existed. But in Somerset we follow these things with particular interest. It is not generally known that there are already rather more than four million Britons over the age of 75; of these, 800,000 are over the age of 85. Most of them have decided to come and live in Somerset. By the time I celebrate my own 85th birthday, at the end of 2024 (if ever I do) it is reckoned that there will be 1.4 million over 85-year-olds. The mind boggles. At the other end of Somerset, Christopher Booker will have celebrated his 85th birthday two years earlier. That is the club I will be joining
There are various possible approaches to this eventuality. Lord Young of Dartington, in a book I reviewed recently, seemed to be proposing some sort of Wrinklies Libera- tion Front Army. A week ago I received a mysterious telephone call from my old friend Ingrams. He was having lunch with Naim Attallah, he said, and had decided to found a new magazine called The Old'un (or possibly The Oldie), catering for elderly readers. Would I be prepared to join the editorial team, he asked. If it had been any- one else, I might have thought he was drunk. Of course, I said, recognising the fruits of a leader I had recently written in the Literary Review, to the effect that the advertising industry was betraying its clients by neglecting the 50-65 age group, whose children were grown up, mortgages paid off, at the height of their careers, with more money to spend than at any other time in their lives. Instead, the entire advertising industry continues to address itself to the non-existent 'young' market, to newspapers and magazines with a 'young' profile. They deliberately ignore the fact that practically nobody between the ages of 17 and 35 has two brass farthings to rub together — and in the case of those at the younger end of the spectrum, between 17 and 30, probably never will.
But it is one thing to theorise about the market opportunities of the 50-65 year old tranche, as Lord Jenkins might call us,
quite another thing to cater for these decrepit and no doubt slightly disgusting tastes. I am not, of course, talking about the down-market staples of a miraculous cure for piles recommended by Mr G. Kauffman of Harlesden or ex-Canadian army officers' surgical trusses. There are the serious delights of dignified old age, from port, madeira, malt whisky and late landed brandy to old Seekers records and Callas at La Scala; proper leather shoes instead of rubber and plastic trainers; pipe tobacco and bay rum for the hair, off-the- peg reading spectacles in a thousand ele- gant designs, books, books, books. . . youth has nothing to offer nowadays except unemployment, penury, squalid accommo- dation and, I suppose, a certain amount of fumbling, usually monogamous sex. Even so, I do not think I will be joining Lord Young's WLFA and I have grave doubts about the success of Ingrams's The Old'un.
In America, where they are already well into the same geriatric explosion which is creeping up on us, they have been through all these exciting leisure ideas. The simple truth would appear to be that the vast majority of very old people do not wish to study Copernican theory, make plywood models of famous racing cars, or play a sim- ple musical instrument. They much prefer to be left drooling in front of the television set until such moment as their Maker calls.
Perhaps this explains why the best-selling book in the do-it-yourself section of the American market (always a major part of the publishing scene in any semi-literate society) is now a manual on suicide. Derek Humphry, author of Final Exit, which gives specific details of ways to commit suicide, could not have guessed what a money spin- ner he had discovered when he took up his strange hobby all those years ago. His book is aimed at the phenomenon of terminal ill- ness, but of course old age is the common- est terminal illness of them all, and ever more vulnerable to the attentions of an im- pertinent or mercenary medical profession.
'I'm afraid it's suffering from price subsidence.' The enormous success of Mr Humphry's book across the herring pond could mean no rnore than that many Americans are even more terrified of pain than they are of dying. Pain should not be a major hazard nowadays in the developed world, although I have no doubt it still is, where you have Wee Frees in charge of the medicine cup- board, or the nursing staff has gone on an extended tea break. But I see this desire for a quick end more in terms of straight con- sumer choice than fear of pain, to which is added, perhaps, a growing mistrust of the medical profession.
America could never have a free Health Service, as we once did here, because Am- ericans are so obsessed with their health that it would immediately swamp the Def- ence budget and consume the entire dom- estic economy, as it was slowly beginning to do in Britain. They must be prepared to pay for their neuroses — so, indeed, they do, through the nose. That is why doctors, even as much as lawyers, are among the least popular groups in the United States. Journalists, by contrast, are reasonably well respected. People no longer trust doctors, piously invoking the Hippocratic Oath, not to keep them alive on some wretched life- support machine at $250,000 a week until their last carefully counted dollar has been sucked away.
Members of Mr Humphry's Hemlock So- ciety and of the Right to Die movement in America claim that the main motive for many doctors to prolong the life of the ter- minally ill is to avoid being sued for failing to do so. It is true that the American pro- pensity to sue for anything and everything adds a dimension of lunacy to any discus- sion of the American scene. I would have thought that it will eventually destroy American competitiveness in any field, un- less something is done about it. But it is simpler to see the matter in terms of com- mercial interest. If British doctors take a strong line against smoking it is because they are so lazy they grudge the work it brings them in the short term, attending on people in the last stages of emphysema and lung cancer. If American doctors take a strong line, it is because tobacco kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. The longer people stay alive, the more of their savings accrue to the medical profession. It is to avoid this that Americans are queueing to buy Mr Humphry's book. It will be interest- ing to see how it does in this country.
Previous page
