Willy Trolove: So many ways to comply with our youthful obsession

There are a number of you out there who are getting older. This is a mistake. Don't you watch TV? Haven't you seen the ads? Surely you realise that we live in a youth culture.

Being young is the obsession of this age. It is, you could say, the zeitgeist, which if I remember correctly from my German lessons is either the spirit of the times or a medium-sized salami from southern Bavaria much favoured at lederhosen festivals.

If, thanks to some horrible accident of bad timing, you are no longer young, all is not lost. You can still pretend to be young. Almost everyone does this and it can be a lot of fun, especially when you've just had a hip replacement or been given a Viagra prescription.

Pretending to be young is best achieved by changing your appearance. Get your hair styled. The difference between getting your hair cut and your hair styled is a subtle but important one involving about a hundred dollars.

Once you have had your hair styled, keep it looking young by regularly applying product. If possible, apply just enough product so that your hair becomes flammable. This will be useful if you get lost in the bush and need to build a signal fire to attract rescue helicopters.

Do not panic if you don't have any hair left to style. A shortage in the follicular department can be overcome by wearing someone else's hair, or by having a hair transplant, a method of youth enhancement popular with retired cricketers.

Hair transplants involve some of your hair being relocated to your scalp from places where it isn't needed so much, such as, presumably, your armpits, your chest, or those intimate areas which, because this is a family publication, I will describe in code by writing the word backwards: your slirtson.

Another way to pretend that you are young is to wear clothes favoured by teenagers. Believe me, nothing looks as good as a middle-aged man with a beer pot dressed up as a 15-year-old.

If possible, wear a sloppy T-shirt with the word "Idiot" or "Stupid" written on it. This is a sophisticated use of irony that only young people understand.

Women pretending to be young should wear miniskirts, crop-tops, and knee-length boots. Remember, if the kids are dressing like prostitutes, it's got to be cool.

Don't forget to wear an obvious g-string and have your appendages pierced. No matter how old and overweight you are, a ring through your belly button and a g-string up your backside makes everyone think you are a lot younger than you actually are - mostly because someone your age should know better.

But you may need to change more than just your hair and your clothes to pretend that you are young.

Wrinkles can be diminished by applying wrinkle creams. Some wrinkle creams consist of synthetic nature-mimicking compounds designed to invigorate and rehydrate the skin, perfected after a vigorous programme of robust dermatological analysis and testing. Others are made from pig fat.

All wrinkle creams work. Take a photo of your face beforehand under a harsh light while tired and hungover, with bad hair, bloodshot eyes and a look of abject despair etched into your features. Then apply wrinkle cream.

Take another photo of yourself in soft lighting after a makeover, smiling like an angel that's just been awarded a particularly nice cloud to stand on, and get the people down at the photo shop to blur the picture a bit.

The difference between the two photos will be small, but noticeable.

Major wrinkles will, however, require Botox. Botox is botulism toxin injected directly into the wrinkled area. This gives you the chance to be paralysed by food poisoning without actually having to consume food - a boon for dieters.

Botox is often combined with a facelift, which is a surgical procedure involving the removal of the patient's dignity. If all goes well, the result is a face that is smooth, youthful and completely lacking expression. This is handy for court appearances, poker games and lying to your spouse about why you were working so late at the office last night. It is not much use for charades.

The effects of age on the rest of the body can be reduced by body sculpting, breast enlargement and liposuction. This is known as plastic surgery, largely because it requires extensive and painstaking reconstruction work to be carried out on your credit card.

Together, these anti-ageing techniques can allow you to pretend that you are a lot younger than you actually are. Quite obviously, this is soooo much better than wearing your wrinkles and grey hairs with pride, thumbing your nose at the world, and realising that our society's obsession with youth is just plain childish.