A quarter of a century ago I was 22 years old, fresh out of Brown, sleeping on someone’s sofa and about to embark on a life in New York. Those were the days, cinematic in their awfulness (in retrospect, anyway). Thank Christ I don’t have to live through them again. But have I really changed that much since then? A little wiser, a little gaunter, a tiny bit less, shall we say, fresh-faced if I’ve tied one on the night before, but otherwise essentially the same. Which is why I got such a shock when I saw a familiar-looking woman in a magazine the other day and suddenly realised it was me. That wasn’t me, that was a 47-year-old, 30 months away from being 50. Me? Nearly 50? Six years older than the leader of the Conservative Party? There must be some mistake.

There may be women out there who cannot wait for middle age so workmen will stop hassling them. But I am not one of them

Ageorexia. Fear of getting old. It’s not like this is any new cultural neurosis. D’ya think Elizabeth I, her of the arsenic face masks, wouldn’t have had botox injections if they’d been around then? D’ya think Anna Karenina would have topped herself if she’d had access to a face-lift? Since time immemorial women have been lopping off the years, sitting in the seat with the most flattering light, making themselves look of more sproggable age, not just to their menfolk but to each other. It’s what we are biologically programmed to do and, until men can get pregnant, it will be ever thus.

And yet. And yet. When I switched on the TV the other day and found myself watching yet another 60-something getting an anorak inserted into her upper lip (or was she getting a breast implant inserted into her bellybutton? I forget), even I wondered when and where this all might end. Twenty Years Younger? Thirty Years Younger? If 60 is the new 40, 40 the new 30 and 30 presumably the new ten, why not?