There was a cloud over the ‘Oldie of the Year’ awards luncheon this week, which was the death only a few days earlier of Sir Terry Wogan. Readers of the Oldie must rank high among Wogan’s TOGs (‘Terry’s Old Geezers and Gals’), as he called his fans, not only because old geezers and gals are exactly what most of us are, but above all because he was for many years the chairman of the judges of these awards and the person who presided at their annual presentation ceremony at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand.
Wogan’s words on these occasions — whimsical, sardonic, affectionate — captured perfectly the nature of old age: its mix of dignity, poignancy and absurdity. And so it was largely thanks to Wogan that the Oldie awards became, during Richard Ingrams’s long stewardship of the magazine he created in 1992, more than just a source of innocent merriment but something rather more — a genuine celebration of the impressive things that many people manage to do in the evening of their lives.
Since Wogan’s departure in 2014, his place as chairman of the judges has been taken by the gifted and irrepressible Gyles Brandreth. As time goes on, the judging gets harder; for as people live longer and enjoy better health, there is an ever-expanding pool of oldies to choose from. Nevertheless, it still seems rather remarkable that the joint winners of this year’s main award should be so old that their ages, added together, would span two centuries. They were Jeremy Hutchinson, who will be 101 in March, and Olivia de Havilland, who will be 100 in July. Altogether, 12 people won awards, and their combined ages, according to Gyles, exceeded a millennium.
Lord Hutchinson and Olivia de Havilland are still both very sprightly.
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