How Old Do I Look?

What’s happened over the last month? Well, there’s the election. Can’t come up at the moment with any suitable trenchant commentary, but Dave’s probably said it all here and here.

Turning to more trivial amusements to divert myself, had a go with the ‘How old do I look?’ tool at http://how-old.net after becoming aware of it popping up several times on my Facebook newsfeed. Unfortunately, became so incensed by its first couple of assessments of my age, that I decided to conduct a scientific study of its accuracy, by plumbing into it a dozen photos of me taken over the course of the last 30-odd years.

Here they are, arranged in the order that How-Old.net had me, with my actual age (approximate, in the case of the non-digitally-dated photos) below them. The first and last photos are indeed the earliest and latest taken, though the first has me six years older than I actually was at the time, and the last I don’t want to talk about.

Actual age: 13	Actual age: 22	Actual age: about 27
Actual age: 18 or 19	Actual age: about 35	Actual age: 40
Actual age: 40	Actual age: 40	Actual age: 45
Actual age: 40	Actual age: 40	Actual age: 45

Further fascinating observations testifying to the crudeness of the tool:

• The two photos that have me as 27 were actually taken sixteen years apart, the first (the one in which I look like a hostile Sue Lawley on steroids) was taken in 1987, the second in 2003. In the first, the preceding few years hadn’t gone that well, whereas in the second I’d obviously re-discovered some youthful joie de vivre. 
• Photos 6 and 10 were taken within a few seconds of each other on the same day. One may conclude that a smile takes years off you? Though that’s then contradicted by photos 7 and 8. 

Obviously, am not going to take any of the above seriously. Though perhaps it's time to start going to bed with blobs of night cream over face. Did/do women actually do this?