Age has always been just a number and now 80 is the new 60

Older performers are making a comeback, with singers, actors, writers and activists carrying on well into their eighties, and that is an excellent thing, writes David Lister

Feisty octogenarians (clockwise from top left): Ian McKellen, Gloria Steinem, Dennis Skinner, Maggie Smith, Clint Eastwood, Margaret Atwood, Michael Caine and Germaine Greer (Getty/PA)

Viewers of Mrs America on BBC2, the fascinating story of second-wave feminism, its advocates and opponents, in the US in the seventies, will have been captivated by Rose Byrne’s portrayal of Gloria Steinem. The feminist icon is shown with her distinctive mix of political ideology and personal vibrancy. What many viewers might not realise is that Steinem is just as ideologically committed and just as active now at the age of 86.

Her most recent book, The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off! was publicly praised by a legion of fans ranging from Emma Watson to Janelle Monae. And next month she will appear in a livestreamed zoom event, ‘Love, life and rebellion’, for the How To Academy with actress Thandie Newton, to talk about her activism, literary output and a life fighting for gender equality.

Age is clearly no barrier to her ongoing influence and public profile, campaigning for Hillary Clinton in the last US presidential election, just as she did for Robert Kennedy in 1968. But she is far from alone in showing that a decade in which it was always believed you were meant to fade into second childishness, as Shakespeare put it, is now as fruitful a time for being on the public stage as your thirties and forties. Who can doubt this when they look at the continuing literary output combined with environmentalism and other activism of eighty year-old Margaret Atwood? Likewise, Germaine Greer, still an author, public speaker, feminist intellectual and controversialist at the age of 81.