The Rolling Stones broke the rules in the 60s and they're just as passionate now.

Your first image might well have been of someone grey haired in comfy cardigan and elastic waist, worrying about false teeth and stairlifts.

But then there's the Rolling Stones. This week the Stones hit the road again on the first date of their Bigger Bang Tour. Unlike other golden oldies who come on stage with double the waistband and half the hair they had in their prime and just go through the motions, the Stones are still rock n' roll.

Mick Jagger, still lean and mean, struts his stuff with as much energy and enthusiasm - and acclaim - as he ever did. Charlie Watts, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood are all earning their places on today's stage - not just re-living past glories.

And their average age is 61.....

True, that does not make them pensioners just yet, but it certainly qualifies them for their bus pass and heating allowance and special deals at the leisure centre.

Meanwhile, over in Texas, Joan Baez, 64, is protesting at an anti-Iraq war camp on President Bush's doorstep. Her once long black hair is now cropped and grey, but she is still stunning, still campaigning, still very much alive and kicking.

The Stones and Joan Baez might be famous but they are in their ways just typical of their generation. The generation that broke the rules and changed the world back in the 60s is not likely to slide gently in to passive retirement.

Until now, pensioners have been expected to do little more than potter, amuse themselves, do a bit of babysitting, but basically, keep out of the way, live in the past, accept the fact that they are no longer part of mainstream society. Try telling that to Mick Jagger.

Pensioners might not be ruling the world, but this generation is still going to be a major, noisy, active part of it. Which for those of us coming up just behind them, is brilliantly cheering news.

Rock on.

SPOTTED two T-shirts in the space of ten minutes in town last week.

The first was worn by a woman in her 30s, clean and tidy and looking perfectly respectable.

The T-shirt was blinding white, clearly carefully washed and ironed.

"If you think I'm a c***, then you should see my husband," it said - only it didn't have asterisks.

And I was baffled.

It was the sort of T-shirt that daft youngsters would buy and wear as a dare, in a moment of group madness and drunkenness.

But this woman, on an ordinary weekday morning, just to go shopping in town, had made a deliberate choice of all her neatly ironed T shirts and had chosen that.

It just seemed bizarre.

While I was still trying to get my head round this, only minutes later I saw a girl of about ten years old - and what were her parents thinking of? Her T shirt, stretched tightly over her blossoming shape, said "I like to fcuk."

Now there's a good defence for a dyslexic rapist...

IN the obituaries for former Northern Ireland Secretary and Redcar MP Mo Mowlam there have been many glowing tributes to her remarkable personality. Here's another one.

My late mother lived in her constituency. All her adult life my mother had never voted anything other than Conservative, was, indeed, a paid up, card-carrying member of the Tory party.

True blue through and through.

Then Mo Mowlam came door-stepping and worked her mixture of clever argument and great personal charm.

It was irresistible. Mother succumbed, broke the habit of a lifetime and actually voted Labour.

That's how impressive Mo Mowlam was.