Editor-At-Large: I wish The Zimmers long life. But I hope I die before I get old

Will The Zimmers reach number one? The jolly bunch of pensioners whose average age is 78 burst on to our television screens last Monday in the BBC2 series Power to the People. In a stunt designed to draw attention to the plight of Britain's lonely and unloved pensioners, this feisty bunch were marched into the Beatles' former studio in Abbey Road where they recorded their version of The Who's anthem "My Generation", with half the profits going to Age Concern. Now film crews and journalists everywhere are begging these unlikely pop stars for an interview.

Of course, two of the original members of The Who are no longer with us. Keith Moon managed to die before he got old, and John Entwhistle followed decades later after a drink and drugs binge in a Las Vegas hotel room. Way to go! The two remaining geriatrics, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, both 63, must be thrilled they've made it on to the bill at Glastonbury, just 42 years after they sang their original rock anthem.

The Zimmers are thoroughly good sports, even submitting to a horrible makeover by fashion expert Hilary Alexander in The Daily Telegraph, donning footless tights (if I wear them, the fashion bitches call it a "disaster" but sported by these grans, it's called glam), leopard skin-print leggings, gold lamé suits and cowboy boots.

What is so profoundly depressing is the fact that The Zimmers have captured our attention only because they are mimicking young people. They have to pretend to be zesty, musical and full of beans otherwise we would swiftly reach for the off-button and Age Concern wouldn't be getting a bean.

The Zimmers are perfect telly fodder: old people who aren't too dribbly, messy or incontinent, who play music, jump about and entertain us, just like young people do. Glastonbury might have nodded in the direction of the elderly, by featuring Dame Shirley Bassey and The Who, but we are talking about three millionaires, not refugees from a care home.

And talking of care homes, I once wrote that if I start to go senile, hand me a plastic bag, because I'd rather end it all quickly than spend my last decade watching daytime telly in a room reeking of boiled cabbage and stale urine. Loads of you wrote to agree. And finally our wonderful government has woken up to the fact that voters are the crumblies, the pensioners and the middle-aged, all of whom probably view the prospect of spending any time in a care home as a thoroughly grim prospect to be avoided at all costs. Only this week, 15 elderly residents in a care home in Lancashire owned by Brightcrest Ltd were told to get their stuff together by 2pm THAT SAME DAY and vacate the premises by 8pm because the company had gone bust.

Time and time again, there are stories of homes closing without warning, of appalling standards, of fires and of lifts breaking down, leaving residents marooned on an upper floor for weeks on end. Sensing a vote-grabbing initiative, the Department of Health last week announced it was going to spend £67m refurbishing 7,000 UK care homes. Shall I do the maths for you? That's a paltry £9,571 per home, not even a well-equipped new kitchen, not a new roof, not a new garden, enough for a new telly, a couple of cheap three-piece suites, a few beds and a lick of paint. BIG DEAL.

And four out of 10 old people in hospital are malnourished because the Department of Health can't be arsed to spend enough on nursing auxiliaries to make sure everyone gets help to eat. At present, two nurses and a couple of helpers per 25 people are all that's allocated. So The Zimmers can sing about "Their Generation" but the tragedy is that 3.5 million older people live alone, and it's not a lot of fun singing along to the telly by yourself, hoping that Meals on Wheels doesn't forget you, is it?

Further browsing: Watch The Zimmers at youtube.com/watch?v=zqfFrCUrEbY and find more at www.AgeConcern.org.uk

Posh jumps ships again, this time to England

Red alert! Posh rushes back to the UK to be at her hubby's side for his return to the England squad. Could it be she fears the knighthood Blair has promised David could be heading for the pending tray in Whitehall? Clearly, Victoria wants to be seen to be as "patriotic" as possible at this critical time so she's jumped ship from a planned American reality TV series to be seen cheering her man on. But hang on. This is the woman who couldn't wait to live in Madrid, and headed off to New York every five minutes in order to relaunch her singing career (disaster) and her fashion line (ditto). Let's face it, Posh doesn't exactly promote Gordon Brown's idea of Britishness, does she? And as for giving money to charity, I am still waiting for the pair to write a thank-you letter to the artist Tracey Emin who donated a £30,000 artwork to their last "charity" event. Artists like Emin contribute far more to charity than the self-promoting Beckhams. Posh has said she finds being called Lady Victoria "camp". Funnily enough, I just find it grotesque.

'Hands up who needs exercise?'

We all know that many school children eat crap, don't exercise, watch too much TV, and are the most obese in Europe. Now the Department of Education has published a report identifying a so-called group of "invisible" kids, aged seven to 11, who have a hard time keeping up at school. They don't want to draw attention to themselves and rarely participate.

The answer, according to Education Secretary Alan Johnson, right, is not to pay for more teachers to ensure every child leaves primary school able to read and write. No, that's too obvious. He's come up with the amazingly bonkers idea that asking kids to put their hands up in class to answer questions stigmatises the "invisibles". So he recommends that the teacher selects which pupil should answer a question.

No wonder teachers get furious. Can't the government at least accept they are the experts? If our fat kids don't get to lift their arms up, we are depriving them of the one bit of exercise that's presently compulsory.

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