With Facebook and so-called reality TV and comic-book blockbusters, we’ve extended adolescence to the boneyard, but how can we keep the look of youth to match our collective mindset? A passage from William Leith’s Financial Times report from the UK’s first anti-aging exposition:

“Back in the noisy marketplace, Paul Mracek, a stress coach, is giving a talk about the dangers of stress. He shows a picture of a youthful-looking Barack Obama, and another picture of the US president, looking much older and greyer, four years later. Mracek is a superb talker. He’s talking about how the modern world fills us with stress. He displays a slide saying: ‘Senseless Thoughts Repeated Endlessly Surrounding Self.’ STRESS. He raises his voice to compete with the rising babble – a voice on the tannoy, music, the rattle of the flab-reducing machines.

‘We’ve seen some things that are mind-boggling,’ says Louise, 45, who is here with her mum Sue, 63. She mentions the gold eye bag pouches. ‘It’s supposed to plump up your skin by infusing collagen. And check out that machine that shakes you and burns calories. Flabbo-loss, or something, it’s called.’

I talk to Ian, 49, whose partner Melanie, 54, is lying on another hospital bed while a woman pumps her lips with Restylane, a dermal filler designed to make older skin look plump, and lips more pouty. Pump, pump, pump. It looks severe and painful. There’s an air of tension. A crowd is gathering.

Ian slots his credit card into a machine. Money, to the tune of £198, is being pumped out of Ian’s account as the Restylane is pumped into Melanie. ‘I don’t like to watch,’ he says.

We talk about modern ageing. We agree it’s not what it was. ‘I’m 49, and I live like I did as a teenager, frankly,’ he says.

Melanie gets off the bed. She looks a bit shaky. I ask her how old she feels.

‘I would say early forties,’ she says.”