Susan Morrison: Too chaise longue in the tooth

It was on the TV. I saw it. The sofa of my dreams. For some reason I have long coveted a corner unit, elegantly curving around walls, inviting comfortable sprawling evenings in front of the telly, and there it was in the advert, in lovely, big, bold colours.

At once I alerted the man of the house. I don’t know why. I just felt I ought to. After all, he has only a passing interest in what he actually sits on. To the showroom, at once, I demanded, where we will view the sofa of my dreams whilst skilfully avoiding the sales people.

Off we went to the shop, where I stood before the coveted sofa, and realised how old I am getting.

This is not a sofa for the over-50s. It is low and springy and multi-coloured. This is a sofa that is designed to have lithe bodies fling themselves into it. This is a sofa that cradles flexible spines which can easily and explosively bound into a standing position. This is a sofa that requires fully functioning knees to take the strain of lowering and raising and reaching forward to grasp your mug from the matching, equally low, coffee table.

Not only that, it was a mass of cushions, behind any one of which the remote control could lurk for days.

This sofa, to use a phrase much loved by the young today, is not age-appropriate.

With a sigh I turned away and spotted a sturdy Chesterfield, buttoned and elegant, with the promise of a safe and sturdy landing for the ageing posterior, and a distinct lack of hiding places for the remote control.

One way this programme could make a splash

Seriously. A programme that teaches people you’ve never heard of to dive off a diving board and land in a swimming pool? This is a television programme? It’s called Splash. Honest. I’m not making this up.

Don’t get me wrong, anything that gets a vision of Tom Daly in his Speedos on my screen is usually A Good Thing, but this is stretching the elastic on the old cossie a bit.

Why not spice it up a little?

Get some particularly execrable human beings – perhaps the people behind the hacking of Milly Dowler’s voicemail – and teach them to belly-flop from a great height, but drain the pool first.

Eighties celebrities hedging their bets

SUDDENLY the adverts for insurance for the over-50s make sense. They’ve been on the edge of my vision since Frank Windsor in the 1980s wandered about his house looking at pictures of the Coronation.

They do seem to change the personnel in these adverts with bewildering speed. Obviously there is the possibility they pop off and have to be replaced, but these days if a TV face from the 80s suddenly vanishes,

we must worry that they are being questioned in an interview room by officers from Operation Yewtree.

These days we’re being persuaded by the mellifluous Michael Parkinson and that bloke who used to be in It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum. He seems to be moonlighting as a gardener. He seems a bit heavy in the dead-heading department.

Mind you, given the recent proposals for pensions, we’ll all probably be pruning for the neighbours till we drop.

SuBo is just my cup of tea

The news that Susan Boyle’s brother may be riding to the rescue of the old Odeon building is certainly exciting, although his use of the phrase “Las Vegas- style cabaret” is a tad worrying.

Edinburgh and Las Vegas are not two immediately obvious halves of the same twinning agreement. Presumably, the showgirls could tailor their costume to reflect this fine city, trading in ostrich feather headdresses and scanty diamante costumes for sensible shoes and semmits. There could be a sequin or two on the slippers.

His sister, however, is keener on a tea room. Now that’s more like it.

Whilst other celebs go for the workout DVD, the make-up line and the designer bags, Singing Sensation Susan Boyle, to give her the full moniker, inclines to a more measured approach to life and is apparently inclined to endorse a decorous tea and coffee emporium. She has fond memories of home-town milky coffee.

Now, this is a good thing. To begin with, would you like a Susan Boyle Workout DVD? No, I thought not. Talented though the Voice Of Blackburn is, I really don’t think many of us want to see her strut her stuff in spandex.

However, and I mean this as no disrespect, I’ve had coffee in nearby Whitburn. I still wake up screaming. It was along the lines of a heritage experience. Prior to that cold rainy day, it had been some years since I had been presented with a coffee sporting a skin thicker than Kelvin McKenzie.

Mind you, the empire biscuit was good, and trust me, I’ll go a long way for a good empire biscuit.