Alexander Chancellor’s diary: Picking golden oldies, Ken Dodd, and the sadness of Jack Nicholson

An excellent test of character is a person’s response to being offered an Oldie of the Year Award. There have always been those to whom the word ‘oldie’ is in itself an embarrassment. When Richard Ingrams founded the Oldie magazine in 1992, he was warned by many that it would fail because of its name. Nobody wanted to be thought old, he was told, and therefore nobody wanted a magazine that would portray oldness as something to be proud of. Ingrams overcame most of these qualms with the humour and irony he brought to the magazine. Nevertheless, I was nervous when I had to telephone Lord Falconer, whom I had never met, to tell him he had been chosen for an Oldie award. Lord Falconer is a political heavyweight who served as Lord Chancellor in Blair’s government. Furthermore, since leaving office, he led a campaign to legalise assisted dying, a cause for which he might reasonably have expected recognition from a magazine called the Oldie.