Recent research into what keeps us looking younger has thrown up some unusual results. It’s not surprising that this area should be researched. After all, at least most of us over 35 are keen to look younger and are taking ever more adventurous ways to keep them – youthful good looks that is.

The simplest way, for those of us trying to look younger, is the way we dress. Somehow, for example, if you can get away with the tiniest of hipster jeans exposing most of your belly, which have been in fashion for at least the last couple of years, it is a sign that you are young and willing to prove it, and you feel that much younger. Now that it has been proposed that indecently dressed women should be plucked off the streets, even trying to look young is becoming dangerous! Who is going to decide what is decent or not decent? The fashion of the young today is slutty, slutty but fun at least most of the time.

The thought of a policeman picking up our young and not so young things because their boobs or their love handles are popping out really takes the biscuit for daft ideas for the year. Isn’t the police force busy enough already? Recently, while I was waiting, legally, in my car a young policewoman harassed me (even though I told her I couldn't just leave my eight-year-old daughter stranded inside a shop), first by threatening to give me a ticket, and then to see me in court.

The crime rate is rising and we really don't want or need our police to be instruments of harassment. We had enough of that with the wardens, who I must say are starting to behave just a little more civilly of late. Some in the police force are heavy handed enough as it is. Why on earth are we planning to give them powers to pick up less than modestly dressed persons is beyond me? Except as another sign that we are somehow regressing since we joined the EU, rather than becoming more liberal and less fundamentalist as many of us hoped?

Perhaps if we really want to clean up Gzira and put the pimps and whores out of business, we should abandon this silly idea and send in Silvio Berlusconi instead! Another character who works hard at looking youthful, as the recent bandana he wore while going for hair growth treatment showed, he has now apparently given up sex before the Italian elections of 9 April! Just to show how extensively religion is abused, Silvio Berlusconi was recently thanked by a preacher on TV for opposing gay marriage and defending family values. In thanking him Silvio decided to give up sex, or so he said, presumably to purify himself before the Italian electorate. If the Italians really fall for that lark, I will switch off their politics and just consider them as a nation of great food and great piazzas, and forget their politics completely...

The research I am referring to (as per an article in the UK Sunday Times last week by Dobson and Rogers) will shortly be published in a journal, Age and Ageing and is a blow for those who don't espouse the traditional way of life. Basically, the researchers considered the impact of medical history, diet and lifestyle on how we look. They then asked a group of nurses to guess the age of almost 2,000 identical and non identical twins in their seventies, and then considered various factors like class, parenthood and importantly marital status.

The report suggested that those who are married, of a higher social class and have less than four kids tend to look younger than their equivalent who did not share those characteristics. That in itself might not be too surprising. What is interesting is that looking young is now proven to be a sign of good health and not just good looks. De Kaare Christensen of the Danish Twin Registry wrote that it is a lot more dangerous looking one year older than being one year older, because looking old for your age is linked to increased mortality, or dying younger to you and me.

Marriage helps women to look younger but doesn't appear to have the same effect on men. Yet the guys benefit more from having kiddies than women do (in terms of appearance at least), which is not surprising as they actually take on less of the responsibility, but much of the pleasure, bringing up their children. And for those of us who are exasperated with pot-bellied Maltese men, we are in the wrong. Apparently, for men at least, being slightly chubby as they get older makes them look younger whereas women fare very differently in the age stakes if they put on weight.

But according to this research the most significant boost to looking younger and actually being healthier is class because “a move up the social scale brings the most dramatic benefits, making a man or a woman look up to four years younger for their age”.

So marrying well and even above your class gives you a far better chance of looking youthful as you get older. Perhaps the fortunes we spend on our fangs cum fake fingernails, at the gym, on our blow dries and plethora of facials need to be taken with a good dose of Maltese sea salt. Marry money and class and you’re really are set up to look younger and have a healthier life.

Whoever said life was fair?