Old people have taken over from teenagers as the social group that people, for their own reasons, prefer to believe are celibate. They can bore us to death on Liveline; they can stupidly fall victim to predatory banks and insurance companies; they can drive with atrocious lack of attention; heaven knows they can even do Travellers to death; but we can't forgive them for having sex, and especially for not being golden enough to do it Hollywood-style.

Well, The New York Times had a report on Valentine's Day about a sexeducation class in Queens, in which the students were warned that their age group had been reporting an increase in sexual activity, with a consequent rise in sexually transmitted diseases. The class were all in their 70s and 80s.

The NYT reported that a survey by the American Association of Retired People had found a sharp increase in the numbers of older men using sexenhancing drugs, and a corresponding "reawakening" among women. The organisers of the class attribute it to the breakdown, at long last, of the belief among women that sex is sinful.

There's been an increase in gay sex as well. They cited the case of an 82year-old woman in the Bronx who recently tested positive for HIV. Yet seemingly old folks have never been shown how to use a condom.

"I'm telling you right now I'm going to say the word penis and the word vagina because those are the anatomical terms and I hope you're okay with that, " the teacher, Monique Binford, said. She told them where the clitoris is and how to achieve an orgasm by masturbating. They were all mortified, but they grabbed their goodie bags, containing lubricants and condoms, on the way out all the same.

Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il had a birthday on Friday with a big party. Whatever you might say about Kim, he's not going to let ageing get in his way. The official state media said flowers come into bloom and rainbows fill the sky when he appears.

He's a walking Carpenters song, isn't he, with his big hair and his platform shoes. It is also reported that he shot 11 holes-in-one the first time he ever played golf. How's that for sexual metaphor? He's only 65, mind.

Here we regard old people as a bit of 'an issue' that we have to 'do something' about. We have nursing-home scandals, equity-release schemes, Mary Harney-phobia, and the 'flu vaccine. Yawn. What a passion-killer.

As Terry Wogan has said: "Age only matters if you're a cheese." Yet even The Oldiemagazine, one of the quirkiest and most irreverent publications around, is conspicuously chaste.

According to The Oldie, you know you're an oldie if you remember a lot of poems by heart, you spend a longer than average time in stationery shops, at least 10 people in your address book are dead, you can waltz, you go around turning lights off, and you don't know who Chantelle is. It's a quaint portrait of what it is to be superannuated, but it doesn't exactly square with the old queens getting it on in Queens.

The fact is, old people tend to conspire in the myth of their celibacy.

They go all coy. But it may just be that they're cannily keeping quiet about it.

If the authorities found out the elderly were having sex, some do-gooder health agency would want to supervise it. Old people would be hauled along to their local community centres, forced to utter words that embarrass even brazen youth, and shown how to slip a condom onto a banana. It would be the ruin of the erotic. Anyway, wouldn't you rather die of VD than of old age?