I THINK I’ve discovered a fatal flaw in this “getting older” lark – it’s no fun.

For a start, none of us thinks we are getting older, whatever our birth certificate says.

Furthermore, Nature has turned it into a litany of moans and gripes.

Actually, it’s not just Nature. I was happily laughing at Harry Redknapp’s remarks on TV’s Hard to Please OAPs as he berated smart-home device Alexa for giving him the recipe for chicken stew instead of scones when I realised I thought this was quite normal behaviour.

Most people over 60 talk to inanimate objects like the TV or anything with a voice, often taking out their frustrations.

Actually, it’s fine to speak to Alexa and even the sat nav in the car. In fact, it’s quite reassuring to continue the sat nav’s conversational style, like having a cleverclogs friend in the car with you.

We speak to these items when we’re not speaking to ourselves. Not real chats. Just occasional phrases like “Now, what did I come upstairs for?”

Grasping for information generally can be hard work. We’ve all got into those conversations about actors and actresses, haven’t we?

“Isn’t that the actress who was in that film about the woman who falls in love with the man on the radio? He was the one who survived a plane crash and was on a desert island.”

Gazing blankly at a friend who similarly can’t quite place the face, this unimportant gem fades from the mind.

Two days later, you think of the actress and the man on the island – but have forgotten who you were talking to about it!

Other conversations with older friends tend to go in only one direction once someone mentions an ailment.

“My knee’s sore”, is often how it starts. “Think it’s my arthritis.”

Then the floodgates open about treatment advice, medication, diet, exercise and all the other helpful but rather depressing information that we older people store up for moments like these.

Every generation thinks the ones after, especially younger ones, are a threat to the future of civilisation as we know it.

“They’re too pampered. They don’t know what hard work is. They couldn’t possibly live in the real world.”

We’re on automatic pilot on this touchy subject – making massive exceptions, of course, for our own amazing grandchildren who plainly live on the planet Perfect.

Many of us argue with people offering a service – from taxi drivers to shop assistants – giving the benefit of our extensive knowledge of “how it used to be” (one of my all-time hate phrases).

Some of us never left the 1970s. Well, they were good times.

I said that being older was no fun but that’s not strictly true. I think we care less about what other people think and say and do have our uses – making other people laugh at what we do, for a start.

I mean ‘Arry’s antics wouldn’t have been funny in a 40 year-old, but they’re brilliant in an old bloke.