THEY used to say that if policemen looked younger, you were getting old.

It’s not often you see a policeman around the streets nowadays to judge them by their age, or your own so I guess we have to alter the saying to fit our own lives.

My life, as you know has always been centred around theatre, books and comedy. So for me, comedians, writers and actors are looking younger.

In my head I still think I’m the new kid on the block but when I think back it’s been nearly 20 years since my first stage play was produced on stage, 26 years since I first set foot on a professional stage as an actor and 25 as a comic.

Not so much ‘new kid on the block’, as ‘old man slouching on the casting couch’.

I am bowled over by the talented kids we had in the cast of ‘Oliver’ at the Regal in Tenbury.

I last directed a kids show ten or more years ago so was taken aback when these nine- and 10-year-olds started singing, dancing, acting… they have no inhibitions, they’re not backwards in coming forwards, they tell it like it is and on one occasion last rehearsal I gave one of them a direction and he came back with a better idea, to which my only answer had to be, ‘Oh, ok… erm, if you need my help, you will ask won’t you?’

Do all kids possess the same confidence in all extracurricular activities?

Are our kids getting talented younger, bolder, more determined to say ‘hang on, I’ve a better idea’?

Don’t get me wrong, I have kids, twins and they’re not ready to take over the world, yet, but if the baton of power, responsibility and command is taken off us by younger fingers than ours were when we snatched it off our parents, is it a good sign for the world?

Or am I just getting old?

Where’s a policeman when you want one?