IF you are of a certain age you will have oft times sympathised with Terry Wogan’s TOGS. Terry’s Old Geezers were an integral part of his late lamented morning radio program.

There are rumours that Wogan is not exactly enamoured with his replacement Sunday slot, or for that matter with his successor on the morning show, Chris Evans.

But while it’s farewell to TOGS, I am hereby launching my own organisation to represent the interests and welfare of crotchety, it was better in the old days, folk like myself. Come and join the BOGS — Brewster’s Old Gits.

I’ve got the car, a perfectly sound little runner that tootles along the A66 at a steady 35mph holding up miles of fuming sales reps. in their Ford Mondeos. And now I’ve got the uniform. The inevitable flat cap worn by all codgers who take delight in thwarting motorists with somewhere to get to in a hurry. Hurry? What hurry? There’s no hurry to get out of God’s waiting room.

Many Herald readers who thought of themselves as middle aged might now qualify for BOGS membership. According to academics from the University of Kent, you are officially old once you hit 58. They surveyed 40,000 respondents and found that the average Briton believes youth ends at 36 and old age starts at 58. Which fits me snugly into Victor Meldrewland with nearly five years to spare.

It could be absolute tosh. But wait a minute, there may be something in it because newsreader Moira Stewart was unceremoniously booted out by the BBC for being too old when she hit 58.

I refuse to sit around complaining because my knees will no longer take me to the summit of Skiddaw. They have more snap, crackle and pop than a bowl of Rice Krispies these days.

And I can’t be bothered listening to all those crinklies who boast they are somehow denying the ravages of old age. Enjoy it, for goodness sake. One of the great pleasures of getting old is that people expect you to be miserable. Exploit the fact for all it’s worth. BOGs will happily chunter for Britain.

Rooney? Pah ... not fit to lace Tom Finney’s boots. Cricket? I remember when there were actually some English players in the England team. Music? Don’t get me started on rap and all that gangsta stuff and smacking up bitches. My mother thought Tommy Steele was a bit racy. And young people today? Don’t know they’re born. We got by without a telly. We didn’t need computer games to keep us amused.

See, it’s happening. A comforting wave of old gittedness is flowing over me already. Come and join us. BOGS is the future, albeit not necessarily a particularly long future.

WHEN EVELYN SCOOPED THE WORLD’S MEDIA

THERE’S nothing quite so patronising and manipulative as all the spin surrounding party leaders’ wives as the election draws nearer.

Perhaps the spinmeisters have quit the hopeless task of presenting hapless Gordon Brown and smarmy David Cameron to the public as viable Prime Minister material after May’s voting.

In desperation they have turned to Sarah and Sam, or SamCam as the media has dubbed Mrs. Cameron this week, in a way that trivialises the whole business of who is going to be the best bet for dragging the country out of the post-election manure.

Banal information about what Sarah is wearing, or domestic life with the Camerons, distracts from the real issue. Sick of politics and politicians we may be, but a government will have to be elected and either Brown or Cameron will lead us into what I suspect are scarily deep financial waters.

They say this will be a good election to lose. Whoever wins will face myriad unpopular decisions. What we need to find out in the weeks before polling day is who is going to be the best at pulling us out of the mire, not who reads the best kiddies’ bedtime stories or loads the dishwasher before cycling off to work. Ironically Sarah Brown and Sam Cameron come across as bright, educated women who could probably do the job every bit as well as their husbands. They are a PR dream, but that’s not the way to decide an election.

Yet here they are, being pulled in by the spin doctors at every step and turn to present their men in the best possible light. Oh for a return to the discreet values of Mary Wilson, the daughter of a Penrith Congregational minister who entered 10 Downing Street when her husband Harold became Prime Minister.

An intensely private woman, she was dramatically different from the dull suburban housewife caricatured so cruelly during Harold’s years of power. It was a time before PM’s wives became personalities in their own right, wrote Roy Hattersley.

Hattersley is wrong about one thing, however. He maintains Mary Wilson never gave a full blown newspaper interview. But she did — to the Herald. Reporter Evelyn Rae was invited to No. 10 to spend a day with Mrs. Wilson and write about life behind the famous Downing Street door. It was a very special coup for the newspaper.

Mary Wilson was mocked as the little woman at home. But in truth she was part of a disappearing generation of people who didn’t complain, blame or go all emotional. She loyally supported Harold and wrote her poetry, but the public knew little of the real woman — unless they were Herald readers, of course.

Would it were that we could concentrate a little less on Sam and Sarah and learn something more substantial about the qualities and policies, assuming they have any, of their floundering other halves.

BRITAIN PUTS OUT WELCOME MAT

STORY of the week has to be about the bloke who popped out for an hour and came back to find an unknown car in the drive, lights on and a Romanian family living in his house.

Perhaps this is the image people from abroad have of generous to a fault Britain where, if they don’t immediately give you a house and money, you can just appropriate one while the owner isn’t about. It certainly takes burglary to a different level. Mihal and Laura Dediu explained that a chap in the corner shop told them the house was empty. The fact it was furnished and full of clothing might have suggested otherwise.

You would think the intruders would have been familiarised with a new home — prison. But no, when they went to court they got away with community service. A burglary charge was dropped because the couple said they didn’t intend to steal the house. Quite inexplicable as excuses go, but what do you expect these days.

Okay, so hand-out Britain let them off with a minor rebuke. Prison may not await the Dedius, but I know a place for them. It’s called Romania.

FROM BAD TO VERSE

POET laureate Carol Anny Duffy no doubt saw herself as pretty cool when she penned a lament to David Beckham’s torn Achilles tendon.

I don’t know whether Miss Duffy has ever written a moving tribute to the many soldiers and civilians who have died on our behalf in Iraq and Afghanistan. If she has I certainly have not seen it. As a one-time Achilles victim myself, I sympathise with Beckham whose World Cup hopes disappeared with a sickening snap. But, come on, let’s have some perspective on the reality of human suffering, please.