A NEW advertising campaign by the charity Age Concern is spearheaded by a poster of the top half of a 56-year-old grandmother posing rather fetchingly in a wonderbra.

Despite the wrinkles, the grandmother in question looks rather attractive, but as I am less than fifteen years younger than her perhaps my judgement doesn't count.

The point of the campaign is to remind people that older people should not be thrown out of work and dumped on the scrapheap simply because their shopping list includes denture glue and elastic bandages.

The idea that anyone who has reached the age of 35 is obviously over the hill seems to be prevalent in modern society.

I imagine it's the result of jealousy among the young because they feel intimidated working with people who can spell difficult words like chair and add two and two together without getting the answer wrong whilst refusing to wear a baseball cap, backwards or otherwise.

From the no-man's land of middle age, I can safely assert that our young people are not very promising on a cerebral level while those on the embalming fluid side of 65 have to take a back seat in the body beautiful stakes.

I can't wait to get old so I can retire and spend all day in a queue at Ilkley Post Office discussing the latest clinical test results on my legs while awaiting an appointment with the specialist.

But I think Age Concern's public relations people are missing the point. Older people should be employed because of their experience, reliability and wisdom - not because they can look sexy in a good light.

I'll bet the particular glamorous granny in question would not look so fanciable first thing in the morning, without make-up, minus the uplifting support of high-tech underwear, and filmed in the pose of removing hard skin from her feet with a pumice stone before putting her teeth in.

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Speaking of deceptive appearances, Bradford Council seems to have got its knickers in a twist over my favourite project - the Odsal Superdome.

It seems that the people responsible for installing the indoor lake keep postponing the date when the first bucket of water is going to be filled.

Those behind the £200 million plan now have only a few weeks to show they have enough money in the bank to pay for a pick and a spade so the work can begin.

If no-one can come up with a Building Society cheque for £200 million by the end of the year the whole project - including the indoor shopping mall with a real ski slope - looks like coming a cropper.

I'm going to get onto Bradford's planning department with my own replacement £500 million project based on a design I wrote on the back of a fag packet.

It consists of a stadium raised on pillars 200-ft in the air and shaped like a huge pastry crust, filled with the latest in computer generated delusions. I can assure them that a consortium of businessman from Iraq are keen as mustard to pump their accumulated oil wealth into my Post Office savings account to pay for it.

The state-of-the-art 'Pie in the Sky' national stadium will contain a full-size indoor Grand Prix circuit and an exact plastic replica of Everest equipped with under-soil heating so mountain climbers from West Bowling can conquer the world's highest peak without getting their hands cold.

I do hope that Bradford Councillors will lend their backing to this exciting project, instead of listening to the cynical, mealy-mouthed minority of detractors who lack the vision that once made our city great.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.