Willett flops at final fence to make the oompa loompa sombre

Respect your elders. That is a popular assertion I have never been entirely comfortable with. Of course, experience is the best way of creating wisdom, and the older you are, the more worldly you are likely to be, but rigidly respecting anyone with more years on the clock than you is an absurd policy.

There are plenty of people older than me who do not deserve any respect whatsoever. Some folk get several decades under their belt without learning anything about being a decent human being. Look at Adolf Hitler, for example. He was 56 when he died as an absolute scumbag. If I was around in 1945 (aged minus 33), was I supposed to respect him?

An unsavoury episode in Weymouth town centre last weekend got me thinking about the subject of respecting elders. An 82-year-old behaved appallingly and offended my wife, leaving me re-evaluating my approach to senior citizens. I have always been extremely pleasant to that generation, but will have to be more wary in future.