I mark up my Diary every year with ‘G’ for Gym on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I’m in there by 0900 and back at work at my computer by 10:00 at the latest. I am 82 this year but I began this more intensive training five years ago.

You have to put the time in and the regularity or don’t bother. I get a new programme about every six weeks and I go through with the trainer the objectives and where we’ve got. I’ve revolutionised my eating habits and regained my 32 inch waist. It is crucial to maintain muscle power as well as mobility as you get older and my ability to lift weights has gone up and up. So many by my age can’t get up off a sofa anymore without clinging onto everything in sight.

The wonderful thing about old age is that you have time you didn’t have when you were flat out in employment. This may sound like a vanity trip but remember there’s a moral side to keeping fit in old age. It is incredibly selfish to let yourself go and become dependent on others years before you need to.

May I also add its good fun doing something you never thought you’d be any good at. And the great change in my lifetime is the attitude of the young to the old. I cherish the memory of the trainers and young things cheering me on as I heaved a weight in the air and carried it the length of the gym!