If the secret to living forever is a boring life, is it really worth it?

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Fish and chips on a Friday and common walks – that’s the secret to a lengthy life, in accordance to John Tinniswood, the new holder of the title “world’s oldest man”. The 111-year-old great-grandfather from Merseyside inherited the accolade after the earlier incumbent, a Venezuelan named Juan Vicente Perez, died at the age of 114.

“Exercising the mind” and “moderation” had been additionally on his guidelines of longevity hacks, together with “never over-taxing your system” and getting together with others. “We are all different people,” he informed the BBC. “It is up to us to make that difference work, otherwise everything fails.”

Perez, in the meantime, had attributed his spectacular classic to “working hard, resting on holidays, going to bed early… loving God” and – my private favorite – consuming a glass of sturdy liquor day by day. Whenever considered one of the “world’s oldest” cohort are interviewed, actually, their “secrets” to difficult mortality all the time appear rooted in some mild mixture of moderation and consuming or consuming their favorite issues on a common foundation.

Californian-born Maria Branyas Morera, who, at 117, has been the oldest living individual since January 2023, has rightfully cited “luck and good genetics”, however she additionally gave a shout-out to “order, tranquillity, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity, and staying away from toxic people”.

There’s a stunning simplicity to all this that appears fully at odds with the more and more standard follow of spending unthinkable quantities of cash in a useless try to bodily roll again the years. On the beauty aspect of the equation, now we have all method of Botox, fillers and surgical procedures deployed so that individuals of pension age can make-believe they’re nonetheless in the first flush of youth. On the “science” aspect, you’ve got these like Bryan Johnson, the tech millionaire who’s turn out to be the poster boy for the immortality quest, after he revealed he splurges $2m (£1.6m) a 12 months on a regime of sci-fi-esque strategies to cut back his organic age.

Not for this 45-year-old the stripped-back, wise strategy of our oldest centenarians. Every day, Johnson’s strict plan consists of consuming an extremely particular vegan eating regimen of fewer than 2,000 energy, 16-18 hours of fasting, an hour of train and greater than two dozen dietary supplements. He additionally undergoes a whole lot of annual measurements and exams, akin to BMI, blood glucose, bodily health, MRIs and ultrasounds.

His most up-to-date technique to reverse the ageing course of? Channelling his internal Edward Cullen and getting injected together with his 17-year-old son’s blood – primarily based on a research that advised older rodents profit from sharing a circulatory system with youthful mice. I wouldn’t be in the least shocked if the man began cupping, bleeding and purging in a bid to “rebalance his humours” at this stage.

But it makes you surprise – whether or not it’s by moderation and a each day booze-fix or by way of a spartan schedule that comes with snake oil remedies harking back to a 14th-century bubonic plague physician – what’s really the level in living longer and longer? Isn’t it extra rewarding to have a wealthy, full and thrilling life full of experiences than merely living forever?

That’s actually the conclusion former MP and broadcaster Gyles Brandreth got here to after just lately interviewing the actor Rupert Everett for his podcast. After listening to about the debauchery of Everett’s youth, Brandreth wrote in an article for The Oldie that his personal life had been “beige” and “boring” as compared. In truth, he stated he felt he had “barely lived at all”.

“What a wild, sex-fuelled life the actor has led. And how beige my existence has been,” stated 76-year-old Brandreth, who is vegetarian, teetotal and has been married to his spouse Michèle since 1973 after they met whereas learning at Oxford. “Rupe has lived – and some. During his late teens, and into his twenties and beyond, sex was central to his existence.

“Young men, old men, he had them all – and women, too. Morning, noon and night, Rupe was having it away with gay abandon. Inevitably, alcohol and drugs were part of the rich mix, but the driving force was sex. I have never met anyone before who has enjoyed so much sex and can talk about it so disarmingly – and hilariously.”

He added that he envied Everett now – the actor is content material, settled and secure, with a long-term boyfriend, however “has a rich and raunchy past” to look again on. “I have got nothing,” mourned Brandreth. “I have never smoked. I have not touched even the mildest drug. I don’t drink and if I wrote up the story of my love life, it would be called One and a Half Shades of Beige. Of course, it’s too late now.”

Perhaps Brandreth will outlive 64-year-old Everett thanks to his measured, affordable and accountable existence. But there’s one thing unbearably unhappy in the notion of wanting again to discover… Nothing. No wild adventures. No misspent youth. No hedonistic whirlwind from which to select anecdotes to shock the youthful era – “You wouldn’t believe what we got up to back then…”

While I’ve acquired nothing however respect for the spectacular demographic comprised of the world’s oldest women and men, I really feel compelled to quote the Alphaville music “Forever Young”: Do you really need to stay forever? If it means side-stepping the most raucous and gratifying bits of life – or spending huge sums of money on questionable modern-day quackery – not really. Though I would simply give the each day liquor a strive.