Oldest swingers in town are crowned

David Cameron and his mother Mary Fleur Cameron attending The Oldie of the Year Awards

The former prime minister was among the guests at the year’s least trendy awards ceremony, although some of the recipients could lay claim to having invented the word.

Sir Peter Blake, who created the cover for The Beatles’ 1967 album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was handed an award for Pop Artist of All Time by the Oldie magazine, which sets out its stall as an alternative to the youth and celebrity obsession of the rest of popular culture.

Mr Cameron who could stake no claim to trendiness, accompanied his mother , Mary Fleur Cameron, as she accepted a Mother Knows Best award for having persuaded Jeremy Corbyn to smarten his dress.

Her intervention was revealed in the Commons last year during her son’s round of farewell speeches, and after receiving the award at London’s Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, she said: “I suppose I should share this with the leader of the opposition.

“I only wish my family was so obedient.”

Another winner who was a trendsetter in an age most of the audience could not remember was Thelma Ruby, the 91 year-old Leeds-born musical theatre star.

During her 70-year career, Miss Ruby has appeared with

Orson Welles in Chimes at Midnight, Dame Judi Dench in Cabaret, and Topol in Fiddler on the Roof. This year she is making a valedictory appearance in a one-woman show That’s Entertainment, in which she proves she can still do the splits.

She said afterwards: “After my wedding day, which happened when I was 45, I think this is the most wonderful day of my life. I am awash with gratitude.”

Guests at the ceremony, an annual event, included the Hull-born actress, Maureen Lipman. But it was Glenda Jackson who took away the day’s premier trophy, for Oldie of the Year. The 80 year-old actress and Labour politician made a triumphant return to the stage last year in the Old Vic’s production of King Lear, following her 23 year run as MP for Hampstead and Kilburn.

The American politician Bernie Sanders was not present to collect his award for Should Have Been of the Year, which was handed instead to his brother Larry Sanders, an Oxford-based academic.

The day’s oldest winner, three years short of his century, was the scientist James Lovelock, whose “Gaia theory” that the earth is a single organism, transformed the study of climate science.