AofA's Hot To Trot Talking Points
Every Friday
Every Friday, I take a selection of the Talking Points in the Advantages of Age FB Group and share them here. They are eclectic and show the variety as well as the vividness of our discussions. I hope. Welcome if you haven’t seen them before.
So excited to hear about this DJ Collective who are all Over-60 playing everything from rap to pop to soul and funk. They are called Fresh Forever and boast one DJ who is 90. Leading the way. They were shown performing in Cologne.
One of our favourite people - Mary Beard who is always fighting for rights. This time, she is stopping the far right from claiming the classic myths. In the Herald -
‘Awful people can be correct’: Mary Beard talks the past and present || Neil Mackay
When Beard comes across far-right figures trying to claim the classics as their own, she confronts them – not in anger, but with facts. But she adds: “I’d be lying if I said I’d a fantastic success rate, but it’s having the argument that’s important.”
She recalls a Twitter row she got into with ‘the far right’ over a BBC cartoon which “showed a senior official in Roman Britain as a person of colour. It produced an absolutely predictable fightback – ‘wokery gone mad’ etcetera etcetera. Look, first you say: this is just a cartoon. Then you say: we know there was a governor of Roman Britain who came from Algeria”.
She shakes her head in bewilderment and adds: “I discovered – and I’d been very naive – that there were loads of people who had somehow picked up the idea that there was no immigration to this country before the 1960s, or that Windrush was when it all started. It’s simply not true.”
Beard even went so far as to put up articles on her faculty website at Cambridge to provide “evidence for diversity”. She came in for torrents of abuse – including the “silly old c**t” line.
Although we can never know the true ethnic make-up of Roman Britain, “there were clearly people of colour here. What we must do, when we’re thinking about Roman Britain, or any province of the Roman Empire, is shut our eyes and imagine that”.
The far right, she believes, lack imagination, and just “block out any idea that there were people of colour here”. A tombstone found in South Shields bears the name of a British woman called Regina, a freed slave married to a Syrian soldier in the Roman army.
3. Singer, Rhoda Dakar tells the story of her visit to Music is Black, a new exhibition at the V&A. ‘I went to ‘The Music Is Black’ at the new Victoria and Albert Museum East with my son, Frenchhh (aka Parizien). His first audible gasp was seeing a photo that lives on the wall in our front room reproduced in a museum! The fact that my Marc Griffith London suit perfectly matched the background was kismet! My dad died before my children were born, so these snippets are what they have to know him by.’
Canada’s David Walker finished a triathlon at 75 with Parkinson’s. That is one determined man. Well done to him. Wowee.
Really happy to hear that there will be one final instalment of 70 UP, the documentary that has enthralled us for years about the lives of these participants since they were 7. It will be on ITV. ‘For over 60 years, one documentary series has done something no other programme has ever managed — follow the same group of people from childhood right through to old age.
It started back in 1964 with 7 Up, checking in on a group of seven-year-olds and asking simple questions about their lives, their hopes, and what they thought the future might hold. Every seven years, the cameras came back… watching as those children became teenagers, then adults, then parents and grandparents.
Over the decades, viewers have seen everything — careers, marriages, divorces, struggles, successes, heartbreak, and moments of real joy. It’s never been about drama or headlines, just real lives playing out over time.
Now, the story is coming to an end.
The final instalment will see the remaining participants reflect on everything — what they achieved, what didn’t quite go to plan, and how their lives turned out compared to what they imagined all those years ago.
Familiar faces return, including the lad who once dreamed of being a jockey, the boy who wanted to be an astronaut, and others whose journeys have taken unexpected turns along the way. There are also emotional moments remembering those no longer with us, alongside reflections from participants who stepped away from the series years ago.
What’s always made Up stand out is probably the format. It simply shows how life unfolds — shaped by class, opportunity, luck, and the choices people make along the way.
Those behind the series have called the final chapter “epic and moving,” and say it’s as much a reflection of society as it is the individuals themselves — a rare record of real life captured over decades.
It’s the end of something truly unique on British television… and for many, it will feel like saying goodbye to people they’ve grown up with.
70 Up will air on ITV later this year.’ From Classic TV.
This was a report in the i paper. Carol Decker from T’Pau says she is still feeling into sex with her partner at 68. Good for her. And I wondered out loud if she was taking testosterone. Several members of AofA confirmed that they are - and that their libido is alive and kicking…
I like reading these snippets. Food for thought. Interesting. Quirky. Thank you.