Sweet nerd of youth

If you want to be popular these days, you have to be young. From the Labour Party and the drink industry, to World Cup cricket and good old Radio One, everyone is trying to attract the attention of teens and twentysomethings. If you're dying your roots, counting your chins and buying your undies from Marks & Sparks, it seems nobody wants your money, vote or opinion.

What none of the focus groups and marketing experts seem to have noticed is that young people are a lousy target for all this effort. If they aren't buying, listening, voting or attending, it's not because they're cynical and apathetic, it's because there aren't many of them and they haven't got any money.

Let's look at some of the evidence. The number of 45 to 59-year-olds has increased by one-third since 1985 to nearly eight million, while 16 to 25-year-olds have declined by one-third to 6.5 million. By 2010, a quarter of the population will be aged over 65.

Already, one-third of men over 55 are no longer working, 1.5 million more than 10 years ago. Many of these have retired early on good pensions, with plenty of spare cash and loads of time in which to spend it. Shopping and leisure pursuits have become the focal point of their lives. They are like the landed gentry 150 years ago, except now there are millions of them, all desperate to spend their children's inheritance while they can still enjoy it.

When the Bluewater shopping complex opened near Dartford, Kent this year, the management company identified seven categories of potential customers.

The most valuable groups were up-market, middle-aged women in the mould of Margo Leadbetter and Hyacinth Bucket - nicknamed 'County Classics' - and their male equivalents - 'Club Executives'. These are expected to account for just over a quarter of customers, but nearly half of revenues.

With all this leisure and loot around, we at Bray Enterprises have discovered the ideal purchase for the grey-haired consumer - a PC. It will relieve them of a grand or two when they buy it, plus a bit extra for all the software and gizmos they find they can't live without. And when they've finished getting it to work, surfing the Net will soak up any spare time they thought they had. They'll even be able to talk the same language as their grandchildren.

We've set up a separate Wrinklies division, and already registered the domain names of Old-Gits-and-Grannies.com, along with You-can't-take-it-with-you.com. Our telesales people are being trained to speak s-l-o-w-l-y and c-l-e-a-r-l-y, and chat about sciatica and surgical stockings while discretely closing the sale.

Naturally, we hope the rest of the IT world doesn't follow suit. But since the IT industry has traditionally viewed anyone over 35 as being part of the bifocals and bedsocks brigade, and quite unable to learn or exercise any technical skills whatever, we expect to have this exploding market all to ourselves.

Paul Bray is a freelance IT journalist.