Age Before Beauty?

The recent conviction of sixty-four year old actor Martin Shaw's sixty-six year old stalker has highlighted the whole issue of geriatric sex. "Just because the body is aged, the desires and urges don't vanish," opines top sexologist Tom Booblander. "Sadly, because of society's ageist prejudices, opportunities to express one's sexuality become scarcer as we age. Frankly, with an ageing population, I'm afraid that incidents like the stalking and sexual harassment of Martin Shaw by a pensioner will become more and more common, as sexually frustrated senior citizens, denied more conventional outlets for their urges, turn instead to deviancy." Whilst most teenagers would find the idea of anyone over thirty indulging in sex, there are a growing number who actually find those of pensionable age sexually desirable. Indeed, it has been claimed that convicted peadophile and geriatric glam rocker Gary Glitter's recently abandoned appeal against court-imposed travel restrictions, was to be based on the assertion that he had suffered a miscarriage of justice, and had actually been the victim of a gang of such so-called gerontophiles.

"Far from being the dangerous sexual predator portrayed by the press, Mr Glitter was, in fact, the victim,” explains Roland Greene-Farte, of Bigg-Wang Associates, the law firm engaged to present the appeal. “Far from having spent the past forty years harassing young girls, we aimed to show that Mr Glitter was himself being victimized by a group of young women obsessed with having sex with older men.” Greene-Farte and his team had planned to show how, over the course of nearly four decades, a series of girls, some as young as thirteen, had flung themselves at Glitter, seducing him with promises of sweets and the opportunity to play with their Barbie dolls. "It was appalling - they'd use their apparent innocence and alluring school uniforms to lull my client into a false sense of security," says the lawyer. "Once they had his trust, they'd strike! One minute they were a harmless child sitting innocently on his lap, the next thing he knew, they were forcibly performing oral sex on him!" However, the defence foundered when Greene-Farte was unable to produce any of the alleged gerontophiles and police were unable to confirm the existence of any organised gerontophile rings. Forced to abandon the appeal, the solicitor blames ageism its failure. "It's institutionalised - the entire criminal justice system refuses to acknowledge the existence of these gerontophiles, simply because the idea of anyone over sixty having sex, or even worse, being seen as sexually desirable by someone younger, is considered socially unacceptable," he declares. "Why can't the much older man or woman be desirable to the young? It seems obvious to me that the young would see the vast sexual experience accrued by the elderly, over a lifetime of good hard shagging, as highly desirable."