Shirley Curry, an online gamer based in Rocky Mount, Virginia, who was 81 when Carl Honoré encountered her. “You think of gaming as 21-year-olds in darkened basements,” the writer says, “but the average gamer is actually in his 30s and people are doing it into their 70s.” Curry exceeded even that, and the fact she was a woman made her even more special. She plays a game called Skyrim for up to 12 hours at a time, comments on her progress on YouTube, and has become a hero in the gaming world. Honoré likes the fact that her style of play is more stately and less frenetic than most: a nice union of an old head and a young heart. “She completely torpedoes the idea that tech is only for the young,” he says. “And is also saying: ‘I can play your games but I’ll play them on my terms and in my way and I’ll still thrive.’ She was having a great time, and making friends across the generational line, so she incarnates so much of what the book is about.”

Velma Bascome, who Honoré describes in his book, with a hint of the ageism he’s left behind, as a “knitting granny from central casting”. Bascome, who is in her early 70s, works for a fashion company in New York producing high-end knitwear. “Knitting grannydom is such a cliche of old age for women and not an especially flattering one,” Honoré says. “This takes that image and subverts it. Yes, she’s still knitting, but she’s knitting in a kickass kind of way. She’s successful, very cool, great company and loving her life. She’s also a good example of creativity marching on into later life. She was coming up with new ways of finishing garments that are now being used across the whole range of the company. She’s the company’s star knitter, and is knitting the thirtysomething knitters into the ground.”

Steve Cronshaw is a retired engineer from the UK and a keen racing cyclist who was deadly serious about the sport in his 20s and remained an enthusiast. Honoré found the 60-year-old hurtling around a velodrome in a tournament for veteran track cyclists in Roubaix, northern France, and says the inspiring thing about him was that he could cycle faster at 60 than he did at 40. Honoré had been having doubts about the book when he met Cronshaw and was wondering whether he could find a positive message in ageing. Cronshaw helped convince him that he could, not least as the cyclist had had to overcome his own doubts about middle-aged men in Lycra. “At first he was appalled by the Mamils and the middle-aged flesh,” recalls Honoré, “so he had to overcome his own ageism and chamber-of-horrors story.” Cronshaw did it and was now happily squeezing his body into Lycra to set new world records for his age group.

Jeanne d’Arc Zarazir (“Jaco”) was a Lebanese TV star in her mid-80s who appeared in a Candid Camera-type programme in which she and other oldies played tricks on unsuspecting members of the public. In his book, Honoré describes several of the pranks – going shopping at a pharmacy for Viagra, buying pregnancy test kits and posing as doddery medics taking blood samples from anxious patients. He met Jaco just before she died in 2017, and admired her unquenchable joie de vivre. “She had such a spirit of laughter,” he says. “Her obituaries said she was the funniest woman in Lebanon, even though she didn’t become a TV star until she was in her 80s. She was a walking, talking example of the idea that it’s never too late to dream a new dream or find a new love.”