Here in Britain we have a very lively traditional jazz scene and a large proportion of the musicians are well into their late sixties and seventies. And many of those guys play like the clappers.

Come to that, the Newfoundland fiddler, Rufus Guinchard, played the Liverpool Maritime Festival once when he was aged 88. He fair blew the roof off the place.

Then again, the Mississippi blues singer, David "Honeyboy" Edwards has just been touring over here, and he'll never see 90 again. The last time I saw him though he was still a mere stripling in his early-80s. Age wise, he was pipped to the post by Homesick James, who was also on the show, and turned in some blazing bottleck guitar at 85.

Come to think of it, the classical pianist Artur Rubenstein was still tickling the ivories when he was in his mid-eighties.

Come on lads, turn your bus passes in.