Well, we can all sleep soundly in our beds now we know the professional life of one of our best-loved broadcasters has been saved by the Great British Public.

I refer, of course, to Jimmy Young.

He must be one of the best-known Voices of the Third Age and, at 80, he is still going strong and since the vanquishing of the powers-that-be (or thought they be) at the BBC, it looks as though he has beaten the age barrier successfully.

He has done it by treating his interviewees with courtesy, playing music his listeners want to hear and doing the job for which he is paid without indulging his personal tastes.

He is a credit to his profession and, for that reason, he seems to be timeless in his appeal to his listeners.

I mean no discourtesy to the organisers of the conference and exhibition for the Better Government for Older People when I say they could have done with his professional approach at last week's event.

I was booked to be one of a panel of speakers, along with Dora Bryan, Judy Cornwell and Argus columnist John Parry in a discussion chaired by Glynn Jones, the recently retired chief executive of Brighton and Hove.

We were all present at the requested hour of 3pm to start at 4pm. When I arrived, no one seemed to know I was expected, though I must say a charming young lady (certainly not a Third Ager!) ran herself ragged trying to find out where I was meant to be.

We sat and waited and eventually were given a cup of tea while we tried to find out what was happening.

We gathered the serious conference in the morning had gone on for four hours when it had been scheduled for an hour and a half, and that the day's programme had suffered accordingly. Not a good start.

As I looked around the hall, I could not see much evidence that the various companies were attracting many visitors to their stands, which was a pity, as they all seemed to have a genuine interest in the lives of older people.

There was considerable interest in the session with the big-name speakers and the hall looked quite full but again it seemed to over-run considerably.

By now, our group was getting somewhat concerned, especially Dora Bryan who said it was her day for being a grandma and she couldn't wait much longer.

Eventually, we got ushered into a small hall that apparently had been reasonably full but the audience had slowly bled away when we did not appear, as announced several times.

Finally, Glynn got the show on the road but by then, Dora had decided she really had to go.

She was so funny when she was talking to the audience and it was a shame that with good organisation they could have had more of her.

The rest of us said our piece about getting older and what we were trying to do with our lives.

I felt very sorry for the organisers as they had obviously tried very hard to provide something for many differing tastes.

But if the Better Government for Older People is to have any clout, it has to tighten up its organisation.

It looked as though the polling stations were doing well as folk voted for the shadow council, which was encouraging.

All in all, it was a very interesting experiment but if it is repeated in Brighton and Hove or copied elsewhere, those in charge must be tougher on the organisational side and show that things don't always slow down with age.