Joe Bennett: Mixed blessings for the oldest man in the world

John Tinniswood, of Stockport in England, the oldest man in the world, has gained a life of mixed blessings, writes Joe Bennet.

OPINION

Juan Vicente Perez, of Venezuela, has died. He was 114. So John Tinniswood, of Stockport in England, who is close to 112, is now the oldest man in the world.

His new status seems a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it’s a title that nobody holds for long. On the other hand, it brings celebrity.

Mr Tinniswood has lived an outwardly unspectacular life. He worked as an oil company accountant until 1972, when he retired. In 1942, he married Blodwen and they had a daughter. Blodwen died in 1986 and her widower now lives in a care home where he seems in reasonable shape. He gets in and out of bed without assistance and keeps up with the news by listening to the radio. It may not sound a thrilling existence, but that is beside the point. The point is that it’s an existence.

He was born the year the Titanic went down. Every other man born that year has since met an iceberg, but Mr T sails on. And, because we are incurable optimists, we pay the millions of dead blokes no attention and turn to the only one still afloat. After 111 years of ignoring him, the media have flocked to Mr Tinniswood’s side.

There are several interesting questions you could put to centenarians. Do you have regrets? What’s it like being that old? Do you envy the dead? Any plans for the weekend? But there is only one question that media ever put, and they duly put it to Mr Tinniswood. To what does he ascribe his longevity? What’s the secret, the trick of it?

It’s an absurd question. You might as well ask a tall man the secret of height. But the old boy, bless him, was more than a match for his questioners. He wasn’t going to traduce the millions of his dead contemporaries. “Pure luck,” said Mr Tinniswood. “You either live long or live short and you can’t do much about it.”

That noise you hear is the angels clapping. The only gods are time and chance. Our little ships of self are tossed about on a random ocean and eventually, one way or another, and at a time not of our choosing, they sink. And that, as the wise Mr Tinniswood knows, is that.

But it’s not the story that we want to hear. It is altogether too bleak. We want some sort of consoling fiction. We want to hear that we are captains of our ships, that we have some control over the tiller, that our fate is not in fact arbitrary. Was there not some little habit that Mr Tinniswood indulged in, some secret naughtiness that made the difference? Perhaps he gargled a little Benedictine before bed?

No. Mr Tinniswood rarely drinks, and he follows no dietary regime. “I eat what they give me,” he said, “and so does everybody else.”

If you find yourself warming to the gentle honesty of Mr Tinniswood, join the club. But then he made a mistake. He admitted to a lifelong weakness for fish and chips — a dish the care home serves every Friday. The media had their story.

“World’s oldest man,” declared the Independent, a once-respectable newspaper, “enjoys weekly fish and chips he credits as secret of old age.”

Mr Tinniswood did no such thing, but since when did that matter? It’s the perfect little myth. Fish and chips is the food of the people. Who among us has not eaten fish and chips? And what a lovely thought that by doing so we have enhanced our chances of a protracted second babyhood and all the indignities that entails? Oh wonder of wonders.

Better still, Friday fish and chips carries a suggestion of religious significance. Catholics eschew meat on Fridays because that is the day Jesus died (though if you can make sense of their reasoning you’re one up on me.) The implication, then, of Mr Tinniswood’s fish and chips is that the heavens pay attention to our little lives, and reward with longevity those who follow the rules.

Of course, no one thinks to point out that, among the several million men born in 1912 who are now dead, there will have been thousands who were every bit as fond of fish and chips as Mr Tinniswood, and some, indeed, who will have worked in fish and chip shops all their lives. Where are they now?

But no, the cosmos cares. Oh, we are fond creatures.