That's men for you - Padraig O'Morain's guide to men's health: A fan website for the TV series One Foot in the Grave (www.tvheaven.ca/victor.htm) says of the series: "It brings home the realisation that Victor and Margaret are what we have to look forward to."
Actually, the research suggests it does not have to be like that at all. In the series, Victor Meldrew is the very cross, very grumpy, very angry old man. Margaret is his long-suffering wife.
But as you age, you are probably less likely, rather than more likely, to turn into a grumpy old man or woman.
Contrary to common impressions, the older we get the more likely we are to focus on positive rather than negative things in life.
In a piece of research published in the journal Psychology and Ageing, young and old people were shown photographs of faces depicting positive or negative emotions. When their eye movements were tracked, it turned out that the young people spent longer looking at those faces which depicted fear. The older people spent most time looking at the pictures of happy faces.
The researchers concluded that older people focus more on the positive in order to maintain their emotional wellbeing.
And it is not just a matter of emotional wellbeing. Optimism appears to boost physical wellbeing as well - or at least to be closely associated with it.
Dutch researchers tracked the health of 999 men and women aged 65-85 for nine years (just what the attraction of the number nine was for the researchers, I do not know - maybe it's a Dutch thing).
What they found was that the participants who, at the start, described themselves as highly optimistic, had a 55 per cent lower general risk of death. Their risk of death from heart failure was 23 per cent lower than that of their more gloomy fellows.
Both men and women benefited equally from optimism in relation to heart attacks.
Why should this be so? Is somebody up there doling out rewards to optimists and punishments to pessimists?
Well, no. The answer is more mundane than that and has nothing to do with the supernatural. The researchers pointed out that people who are pessimistic may be more likely to smoke, eat too much, over-indulge in alcohol and engage in other habits which are bad for their health. They may also be more likely to suffer hypertension.
Of course, health in old people tends to be less good than health in young people.
But that fact does not necessarily condemn all older people to a state of gloom.
Researchers in California spoke to 500 Americans aged 60-98, all of whom had had health problems of various kinds.
The researchers asked them how well they believed themselves to be ageing, on a scale from one to 10, with 10 being the best score. On average, they gave themselves a score of 8.4.
That's probably a fairly good score at any age, let alone when you've had to fight off cancer, heart disease and other threats.
What the finding seems to suggest is that how good you feel about yourself mentally and emotionally is affected by factors other than your physical health.
In other words, people who are gloomy in old age because of their physical disabilities may actually be gloomy people anyhow.
Of course, this is all terribly easy for me to sit here and say - but if I live long enough to test out all this research, I will be sure to let you know how it worked out.
But it seems safe to assume that if you are an optimistic sort of person, you have something to be pleased about. There is a good chance that your optimism will continue and will protect your wellbeing for life. Then again, if you are an optimistic person, you probably believe that already.
If you're a pessimist, I hope that even you might agree that these findings provide a powerful incentive for walking on the bright side of the street.
So cheer up. Accentuate the positive. Don't become a Victor Meldrew.
Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.