Romance through the ages

WHAT is it about older men that makes them irresistible — their wrinkles, their baldness, their slack muscle tone?

Their creaky joints, entrenched attitudes, their pipe and slippers?

It works for Soon Yi Previn, who, at 31, is 34 years younger than her kids’ dad, Woody Allen. Calista Flockhart, 45, married Harrison Ford, 68, last year, after dating him for eight years. Rod Stewart, 66, has had another baby with Penny Lancaster, 40. The BBC journalists John Simpson, 66, and John Humphreys, 67, both have young children — Simpon’s son was born in 2006, to a partner 19 years his junior, and Humphreys had a son in 2000, before splitting with the child’s mother. He is now dating journalist Catherine Bennett, 51. Lisa Murphy, the 38-year-old former partner of Michael Flatley, is now in a relationship with solicitor Gerald Kean, 54. Pint-sized President Sarkozy, 53, is married to younger, taller Carla Bruni, 43.