The Rolling Stones have done very, very well over the years, producing a number of extremely successful tours, yet nothing lasts forever.

The Stones, almost all of who are in their sixties and one of which is in his seventies, appear to have outlasted their audience, who have come to prefer a nice quiet evening at home to the inordinate decibels of a Stones concert.

Incredibly for the biggest grossing tour band on earth, hundreds official tickets are still available for their Twickenham concert on Sunday and next Tuesday as well as their concerts in Cardiff and Glasgow.

Many more are also languishing on the internet auction site eBay with bids starting at as little as one penny.

Promoters have taken the unusual step of erecting hastily arranged billboards on the main roads into London advertising the shows - and are also taking out newspaper adverts to shift them.

But perhaps most embarrassing of all for the band who have a combined age of 249 is that cut-price tickets are also being sold to pensioners through the company Saga.

Saga, a company offering value-for-money services for the elderly has stepped in to offer half-price tickets to see the band during the European leg of their 'A Bigger Bang' tour.

Stones tickets unsold? It boggles the mind.

On the other hand, I have to ask myself the last time I saw a concert--James Taylor five years ago. Yeah, its sad, but I have to be in the right mood for Van Halen, ZZ Top, much less the Stones, and increasingly that's an infrequent occurance.

The other element of this is that James Taylor, bald and avuncular, doesn't look odd singing his hit songs.

A friend of mine, a younger friend of mine, bought big money tickets to see Van Halen and meet them backstage. His first comments about the show were, "man, these guys are really old..." Wrinkled skin, age spots, reading glasses---ewww.

The magic was gone. You can't go home again. My friend is unlikely to see another Van Halen concert--ever.

The Stones problem is probably a lot like Farah Fawcett's problem. If you are a certain age, you'll remember Ms. Fawcett as a seventies sex symbol of surpassing intensity. Millions of girls emulated her hairdo (some still do...). Of course, beauty, like youth is fleeting, but efforts to recapture it are well...creepy. This is a 60 year old woman trying to look 30ish (40ish?) What does this do to your youthful fantasies?

Yeah, I thought so.