Six in 10 men and four in 10 women aged 65-74 had at least one sexual partner in the past year (Image: Getty Images)
DIANA Athill, who died age 101 in January, wrote this about growing old: "The most obvious thing about moving into my 70s was the disappearance of what was the most important thing in life: I ceased to be a sexual being."Actually she had been more of a sexual being than most of us, but by today's standards she may have hung up her spurs prematurely. Among pensioners there is something of an ongoing sexual explosion. "Sexagenarian" has taken on a new meaning.
In Derbyshire, which as far as one knows is not a uniquely passionate county, the NHS has started distributing condoms free to pensioners, not to prevent pregnancy (obviously) but because some of the less welcome side effects of sex away from home are a growing problem. Safe sex for the over-60s doesn't only mean avoiding heart attacks and being careful with the arthritic knee.
According to a vast research project conducted in 2013, 42 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men between the ages of 65 and 74 had at least one partner of the opposite sex in the previous year. Better health has something to do with it and so of course does Viagra. The figures will be bigger now and will continue to grow.
That warms my heart, and not just because I'm 73 years old. Why? Because once upon a time I was editor of Honey magazine, the only man among the dozen or so editors it had in its 26-year lifespan. Honey, launched in 1960, was something to adore.
Even today I meet women who say: "Oh Honey, I loved Honey." I have done many jobs in journalism since then but none that gets me such applause.
Better health has something to do with it (Image: Getty Images)
Before Honey there was no magazine in Britain for young women. In the 1950s, you transitioned from being a girl to being a housewife with no in-between.
There were comics such as Bunty (featuring The Four Marys - friends at a girls' boarding school), there was Girl (sister publication to Eagle. Top strip cartoon - Kitty Hawke and Her All-Girl Air Crew) then there was nothing until the women's weeklies: Woman, Woman's Own and Woman's Realm, mum mags stiff with recipes, knitting patterns and sensible clothes.
Then came Honey. Its first slogan was dull as dull: "For the teens and twenties". The magazine nearly died at birth. But from 1962 it became "Young, gay and getahead" (differently gay in those days of course). If you were looking for what was fab in fashion, this was the place.
And if you were a girl who had heartaches or problems and concerns about sex you certainly wouldn't talk to your mother about and couldn't trust the family doctor with, Honey was your friend. It answered your questions; it was on your side.
The Pill was a liberation for a lot of people (Image: Getty Images)
The first magazine to discuss contraception for teenagers and premarital sex, it provoked vexed questions in Parliament with cries of "appalling"... "destroying the nation's morals" and "how dare they?"
The teenage girls who were Honey's readers are now in their 60s and 70s. How many of them would have thought they were embarking on lifelong loving? Sex for "teens and twenties" was exciting, compelling, fresh and often
