Al-Pacino has recently become a father at the age of 83, I’m not sure he even knows. I think he’s done it because he just wants something else in the house that soils itself too. A little wingman, that looks like him. I wonder if his wife changes them both at the same time, their legs wiggling in the air, like a couple of roast chickens, as Al hands her the Wet Wipes.

There seems to be something else going on here. I think it’s all to do with legacy, getting your DNA out there, something to carry on your name before the end arrives. It seems to be our final act of control before we check out.

My parents are in their mid-seventies now and they just talk about death, this is what happens, for them, this is the next stage of life. My Mum will walk round her house saying, “one day, one day, this’ll all be yours” and I find that quite upsetting, because I need it now. I’m in negative equity, are we staying or going Mum? Make a decision, do you know how hard it is to get a builder lined up!

It’s not great getting older, I can see why they get lonely, they slowly disengage from society, drifting away from the mothership of life. My parents are starting to find things overwhelming; they have the worst shower in Yorkshire. It’s appalling, there’s absolutely no water pressure, it’s like standing under a cullender of draining pasta. You’re better off leaving a flannel in the floor tray, letting it absorb water and then ringing it out over your own head. They can’t be bothered to call a plumber. It’s like they’ve looked and gone, “we’ll be dead soon, let’s just be one with the dandruff”

It’s very easy to become irrelevant. I get a lot of older people at my shows, which I love, but it does mean I have to budget a bit more time for the after-show selfie. I love having pictures, but my heart sinks when I see someone coming over with their phone in one of those folding cases. Their whole life is in there, leather bound, credit cards, pictures of the Grand kids spilling out. Sometimes they have them dangling on a lanyard. That’s when you know you’re getting old, when you have to hang technology of your own torso, like some sort of human buckeroo.

Let’s face it, life is exhausting. I used to wonder why old people got so miserable and cantankerous. Now I get it. When you’re young you have a utopian view of the world, it’s flooded with hope and optimism. As you get older you see the same problems not being dealt with. Roads with potholes, sewage in the rivers, delays on public transport, successive governments of gold-plated morons, after eighty years, you’ve just had enough. It just keeps coming, relentless stress, forever repeated, like the buffet table they run past on Scooby Doo.

My Mum often doesn’t want to speak to me. I get it, she’s on limited time now, you’ve got to prioritise those conversations. Why would she want to talk to me, she had eighteen years of my nonsense, she’d rather speak to my wife, she actually likes her. She’s the daughter she always wanted.

It’s not a conversation when I speak to my Mum, it’s like she’s waiting to do a parachute jump. She’s just looking for an out. I ring up and as soon as I speak to her, I can sense her trying to put on the shoulder straps. I can sense her frantically looking for my Dad. I want to speak to her, but she’s slid back the door and she’s ready for take-off. As soon as I let her in, she sniffs a chance to bail on me.

“I’ll tell you who’d like to hear about your car…..YOUR DAD! HERE YOU ARE!” she just chucks the phone at him.

Having said all this I do feel that pensioners seem younger these days. They have a real energy about them. I blame Mick Jagger, and Joe Biden. When I was younger, I remember old people looked ancient. They walked bent over, had skin like gooseberries, they couldn’t even look up. They were essentially re-animated fossils. Now they are out in Costa, going on cruises, clogging up the queues in post offices and burning through their children’s inheritance.

They often channel this energy, into moaning about the younger generation. Personally, I have mixed feelings about bringing back National Service, but all I know is that a lot of mortgage free pensioners with absolutely no skin in the game are very much behind it.

I think it would be quite wonderful to have a few years of conscription. At forty-five years old, I probably wouldn’t be much use, unless the army increases its budget on Rennie’s and Volterol gel. However, it would be nice to see some younger soldiers refusing to go over the top unless they got a fresh avocado delivered to the trench by a student on a moped.

It’s impossible to get on the property ladder. Why do they call it a ladder? It’s not a ladder for the next generation, it’s more like a wall, covered in grease with pensioners at the top, drinking wine, laughing and repeatedly chucking their antiques at their silly haircuts.

My parents are just older versions of us now, they have still got that spirit, still integrating with society. The trajectory between us and them isn’t that far away anymore. They look good, they dress trendy, and they’ve prolonged their life through supplements, Alan Titchmarsh and rice cakes.

They’ve got hobbies, my Mum does Pilates and my Dad plays in a Ukulele band, I have left four messages on their answer phone this week, they are never in, they’ve got a more active social life than I have!

Old people are smashing it in society now. Joe Biden was their hero. He had his finger on the nuclear button, and he didn’t know what the hell was going on. I did feel safer with him been in charge though. Even if he had invaded Iran, he’d have spent three days wondering round trying to remember what he went it for. When Kier Starmer met him, he said that Biden was on good form. That sounds like something you say when you visit someone in hospital. “He was on good form; he was sat up and speaking!”

When you’re a pensioner there is a freedom though, it’s like being a toddler again, you get a free pass. It’s always a pensioner who takes down a politician. You can’t media train them. They have been revving up since Good Morning Britain. Some of these old people are loose cannons, they are nan-grenades, they are on the watch list at Mecca Bingo. They have ruined weddings, Christenings and now they’ll take you career down with one random question. It’s easier to take on Putin, at least he’s predictable. Forget IED’s it’s OAP’s, that’s what you should worry about!

We feel that sense of empathy for old people. When I see a bank robber on trial for historic offences, a small man in his 90’s, sitting in the dock with a nurse and a drip. I just feel sorry for him. “A dangerous career criminal” I think, he isn’t, look at him?! He’s old mate! Past him was awful, but this guy could be taken out by knocking the thermostat down half a degree?! He can’t survive a winter never mind a cross examination.

I think you start to panic about time when you get into your seventies. You stop wasting energy on people you don’t like. My Dad has whittled out all the deadwood in his social life. He used to have a circle of friends now it’s just a triangle. He’s got three friends, one of those is my Mum. The other is a man he waves to on his street because he has the same car as him.

He doesn’t care what people think now. I saw him the other weekend polishing his car with a pair of old underpants. He said, “it’s better than any cloth” I said that might be the case dad, but at least take the pants off first.

Some older people are really trying to change their legacy, especially when it comes to the environment. Just Stop Oil they are one of the few employers that don’t discriminate on age, recently two pensioners aged 82 and 85 were arrested for trying to chisel the glass case around the Magna Carta. it was like watching your nan and her mate try and do some DIY, she even got the hammer out for her, like she was fishing a Murray mint out of her handbag. It’s nice to see a couple of pensioners with punk spirit. What’s next, a dirty protest at the Garden Centre. 

I would have given them the benefit of the doubt, it’s only the Magna Carta and they probably helped write it.

I’m in my mid-forties now and I’m starting to think about my legacy. I recently went and sorted out a will. What a miserable day that was.

Thought it was being responsible. It was so bleak. The solicitor told us about a Family Wipeout clause, she spelled out this scenario. “Imagine that, you’re on an all-inclusive, the whole family together, let’s just say Crete, five-star, trip of a lifetime. On the transfer from the airport to the hotel, the coach driver is overworked, midday sun, comes in through the windscreen. He turns sharply, rolls the bus, it goes down the cliffs into the ocean, you try and swim to the surface, but the pressure pulls you under. Your wife and children, everyone is dead, no survivors, all gone. Who would you like to leave your money too?”

She then said before we finished, “any history of depression?” I said yes, when did it start, she said, about fifteen minutes ago!

I’m trying to change things for my children. My parents were always late. We were the late family. It was infuriating, as a child you’re powerless in that situation. You’re just taken along on this current, this rip tide of tardiness. I wanted to learn to drive just so I could be early for once. They think they can stop time my parents. I’d have to be at football training, we had fifteen minutes to get there, my dad would then just start mowing the lawn. They never factored in the time to get anywhere. To them contingency was an alien concept. Why waste time being early when you can arrive at somewhere, stressed, sweating and apologetic. I’m changing that pre-programming; my kids have never been late.

It’s part of my legacy. Parenting is about righting the wrongs of previous generations. Ironing out the issues. It’s basically like a new iPhone, just making small improvements to each subsequent model. The traits you get from your parents aren’t often traits those are scars!

The legacy I leave behind will be strange for my kids. I’m a performer, I’ve been on the telly, I’m all over social media, and my wife and I have done a weekly podcast that is in its third year. My parents have a minimal digital footprint. Their parents even less. There’s a couple of old cine-films in a box in the loft. Moving pictures with no sound, crackling and skipping. Footage of weddings and parties but that’s it. No profiles, no Tik-Tok accounts, nothing. My kids could do a full deep dive on us. There is so much content they could probably bring us back using AI.  

I’m going to start getting my parents on film more. I want to remember them; I want to re-live those moments. We all leave a legacy, but now with technology we don’t have to forget it. I want to capture their amazing energy, it’s all I’ll have once they are gone.

I really mean that too, because my Mum is leaving the house to my wife.