AbouT 10 years ago, when I was...er, 19, I wrote an article entitled ‘Old People Do Have Their Uses Too...’ It was intended, naturally, as a tongue-in-cheek commentary, so deliberately over-the-top I just assumed everyone would spot its mischievousness.

Of course, in reality, what I should have done is swapped said tongue for two sticks of dynamite, a phial of ebola and a fistful of suppositories, such was the outrage with which the article was received.

Indeed, it got so bad, every time I spotted a blue rinse, heard the clip-clip of a walking stick or sensed a bus pass being unsheathed, I’d duck.

Still, life moved on. Nevertheless, last week I was once again forced to confront my prejudices about old age when watching a screening of A Clockwork Orange, the ultra-violent movie that even today retains the power to shock and outrage.

It should come as no surprise to learn then that while waiting outside the cinema to take my seat, I began to feel anxious about the audience around me.

Sure there were students, and sure there were young people in general (young people love violence) but what I hadn’t expected was the number of older people queueing to see a film in which rape and murder are so explicitly glamourised and portrayed.

And I started to think my worst fears might be realised when, during the first quarter of the film (its most shocking segment) a couple walked out.

I didn’t blame them – the infamous assault scene is not for the faint-hearted.

However, what did surprise me was that the couple were young.

I’d have bet the farm that the ‘appalled and outraged of North Oxford’ would at least have been in their fifties.

Until that is, I started to do the simple mathematics.

Clockwork Orange, you see, came out in 1971, which means if you were 20 in that year and all wrapped up in free love, mini skirts and student protests, you’d now, in 2010, be tipping 59 – so you’d have already seen it, doubtless loved it, and probably, at the time, championed its artistic excesses.

The only difference is, you now wear M&S beige, expandable waistbands, watch Countdown and Eggheads and complain about inheritance tax.

Sitting there, at the back of the cinema, it was a watershed moment for me.

In a life-changing U-turn, I suddenly stopped thinking of the 60-plus as Last of The Summer Whiners, obsessed with tea-towels, bi-focals and lawn fertiliser, and instead saw them as I now see myself when glimpsing in the bathroom mirror first thing in the morning. That is – me, but older.

I guess the granny generation of little old ladies is fast disappearing, and the OAPS of tomorrow will be you and me.

You know, whose grandchildren will delight us with DVDs of Straw Dogs and Hostel at Christmas and listen, embarrassed, as we mouth the words to Anarchy in the UK.

I can’t wait...