Why John Major is forever 55

Assigned ages: a guide to the mind’s favourite trick

My hunch is that you don’t think about John Major as much as I think about John Major. And that’s okay — life is a rich tapestry and I’m sure you’re busy pursuing other, lesser interests. Which is precisely why you might enjoy the above interview. Major is at his charming, warm-beer-and-freshly-cut-grass best, while even Giles Brandreth is tolerable.

I watched along somewhat absentmindedly while cooking, in the way the interwar generation listened to Muzak while browsing for nylons. I’d heard it all before: the music hall father, the two-room flat in Brixton and the love of cricket. Only one disclosure jolted me from my torpor — the revelation that Major is 82 years old.

The way he said it — so matter-of-factly — precipitated something of a rupture to my nervous system. With the tomato sauce threatening to graduate from gentle simmer to low boil, I had to Google it quickly. How could this be? I had long ago assigned Major the age of 55 and never thought it necessary to revisit the matter.

It’s all relative

There is, of course, a Major specific-element to this conundrum. As prime minister, he was painted — in some cases literally — as a grey man, and always appeared older than his years. He was also 1990s-coded to an almost cartoonish degree, up there with Nirvana and Absolutely Fabulous.

Major scarcely entered the national consciousness in the 1980s, managing to progress from Chief Secretary to the Treasury to Number 10 in little more than a year. Then all of a sudden, he lost office and, unlike certain former leaders, he was rarely seen from again.

Consider this: Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr. and Barbara Walters were all born in the same year, yet occupy wholly different time periods. Frank was a brilliant young woman of the 1940s, King a giant of the 1960s and Walters a television personality of the 1980s. Incidentally, my Grandma, who passed away last year, was also born in 1929. When people speak of Frank as history, I often think… it’s a little more complicated than that.

We can use more modern examples, too. Joe Biden and Neil Kinnock are the same age. Yet one led the world’s most powerful nation as recently as last year, the other left the House of Commons in 1995. Age and time are malleable in that way. I mean, have you ever noticed how ‘old’ is always 15 years your senior? Think about it. I’m in my mid-thirties — 40 no longer seems a preposterous notion. But 50? That’s daily statins and orthopaedic shoes territory.