They've been through tough times of war and desperation, so is it any wonder that pensioners are looking for adventures rather than bingo?

Pensioners are up to their ears in debt. New figures show that between them, they owe a whopping great £57bn.

Which is going to be a bit tricky to pay back from the basic pension of £87.30.

All the usual suspects are given as reasons. Pensioners have been putting children through university. In many cases they're still supporting children long after they have their degrees. They're helping their children buy houses too. And some are even paying for their grandchildren's education. It never ends. All very understandable reasons for pensioners being in hock.

On the other hand, perhaps it's not all doom and gloom and lifelong responsibilities. Maybe pensioners just want to have fun.

After all, the generation now in their 70s lived through the war, the post war greyness and the restrained and careful 1950s. By the time the Sixties were swinging, today's 70-somethings had families, were settling down, being grown ups and sensible, growing their own veg, baking their own cakes.

Can you blame them for wanting a fling now?

Many of them are making up for lost time, travelling, enjoying themselves. If you've spent your childhood in a house with an outside lav, there is a definite pleasure in a glitzy new bathroom with power shower. If your greatest childhood treat was the club trip to Redcar, then who can blame them for jetting off to sun themselves in Spain or Florida. They deserve it.

Pensioners are no longer condemned to sit arthritically in the fireplace watching everyone else enjoying themselves. They have new hips, new knees, new teeth and an unquenchable thirst for adventure to try them all out.

Pensioners are just like the rest of us. They want comfortable homes, decent holidays and good cars. Indoctrinated in an earlier age, they have always saved up for what they want. Many never had the opportunity to earn the big money available now. But when they see their children and grandchildren having fun with borrowed money, then they want a slice of it too.

Would you be happy with a game of bingo and a packet of mint balls? No. So why should your gran?

Pensioners are taking on extra mortgages, using their credit cards up to the limit. They are not just seizing the day, they are seizing the week, the month, the 16-day cruise with upgraded cabin and trips ashore.

And if they spend all their money and die in debt, well, it won't be their problem, will it?

It'll be ours.

Chris Tarrant says his wife Ingrid imposed a sex ban. Ingrid Tarrant says Chris was hopeless in bed and smelt of fish.

Will someone please bang their heads together?

Their divorce is going through. They have already washed a wagon load of dirty linen in public. They have nothing more to prove, nothing to justify. Their sniping makes them look like idiots or worse. If the marriage was so bad, then why did they stay in it so long? And how did they manage to be so smiling and affectionate in so many newspaper interviews and even a tv show?

Another bit of television fakery.

Marriage is the most intimate of relationships. We see each other at our best and definitely at our worst - physically, mentally, emotionally. Keeping that to ourselves is part of the trust that marriage is meant to be about. An unwritten, but intrinsic clause of the marriage contract is that those moments are kept private. If they have to come out in the divorce court, then so be it. But in this case they didn't.

If the Tarrants can't keep quiet for their own self-respect and dignity, they could at least keep their lips zipped for the sake of their children.

With all that's been revealed in the past few months, they, surely have suffered enough.

A Level results are out tomorrow. If you or your children have got brilliant results, then many congratulations. Celebrate in style.

And if you haven't, don't panic. Remember good A-level grades are just the quickest way of getting to where you want to go. There are other ways, other routes, other exams, other universities, other options, other years, other directions. A whole load of alternatives, so don't beat yourself up for missing out on just one option.

Although it won't seem like it tomorrow, it might even be a blessing. After all, sometimes, when you don't take the straightest, most direct route, the journey turns out to be a lot more interesting.