Grumpy old men and women
I DON’T want to spoil anyone’s fun or anything, but perhaps the solution for all those Grumpy Old Men and Grumpy Old Women is just to, y’know, cheer up a bit.
From Grumpy Old Men to Grumpy Old Women to Grumpy Old Christmas, Holidays and New Year, you can’t turn on the gogglebox these days without seeing someone middle-aged moaning on about their lot in life.
The TV programmes have spawned DVDs, spin-off books and even live stage shows and I wish they would just buck up.
Recently I saw an advert for a theatre show called Grumpy Old Women Live, in which Jenny Eclair, Linda Robson and Dillie Keane (nope, me neither) sit on stage and complain.
Lordy, but that sounds like a fairly awful night out, doesn’t it? If I live to be 178, I suspect that I will never find out who Dillie Keane is, and even then, I’d have no interest in why she’s so glum.
Like political correctness and Premiership football, the Grumpy Old... series was an initially good idea that has since been taken much too far.
It was mildly diverting, at the start, to see people like Will Self and the late John Peel muse on our changing times because they were witty and produced genuine insights once in a while.
But by the time you get to Dale Winton complaining that holidays are rubbish, you know it’s time for a change. (I mean: holidays aren’t rubbish, are they? They’re generally pretty great, that’s why we prefer them to going to work).
Just before he died at the criminally young age of 45 – something that gives you the right to be a bit glum – the great comedy writer Harry Thompson said: "The thing about cancer is that nothing is capable of annoying you any more.
"All around me I see people getting cross and I think: ‘You’re all mad. You’re wasting your life’. I wish I had learned that a lot earlier."
That sort of stoicism is probably too much to ask when people are going about their everyday life, I know. But I can’t help feeling that it’s hugely preferable to watching rich people off the telly grumble about how terrible their lives are.
Everyone gets grumpy, and there are lots of things to get genuinely angry about, too.
But let’s not forget that life can be pretty damn good once in a while, too. Get loads of people saying that on a TV show and I might even tune in.
