Sir John Mortimer seems weary. It's late afternoon in Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel bar. If the past is another country, so was 5 a.m., when he was hurtled through the wintry gloom to catch a wheelchair and then a flight from Manchester airport. He's struggling to keep his eyes open but denies it. He is 77 and has made an issue of his age by writing a book, The Summer of a Dormouse, about not being able to put on socks now his retinas are wandering and needing oversized shoes for his swollen feet.
The barrister, novelist and creator of Rumpole of the Bailey likes to be with people. It's just as well since he desperately needs them. He prefers to be all eyes in this crowded space than holed up in an over-sanitised room.
He is casually slouching in an armchair, sipping Guinness, a purple handkerchief in his pocket, wearing a bespoke tweed suit from a tailor in Oxford. He looks the part - classy and well turned-out, apart from the loosely-laced shoes, that is. He is heavily-built, with jowlish cheeks and grey feathery hair edging back from his forehead. He sighs a lot and smiles through his eyes. Maybe he's flirting. Maybe not. It's a reputation that precedes him. Nothing more.
The worst thing about old age, he believes, is that it lasts for a very short time. And breakfasts come round with ever increasing frequency. "You can't exactly run away with any young thing," he adds. And pauses. But he knows he could do better. There's a serious, less flippant side to Mortimer yearning to get out. He shrugs apologetically, emitting a deep guttural cough. "You're more at peace with yourself in old age. People waste a lot of their time being grown-up - you don't have to do that anymore. You can be as childish as you like."
He doesn't believe individuals alter much. Time makes little fundamental impact. "I haven't changed since I was 11 years old. I was always two people. One part of me was behaving badly. The other was observing."
Moments, he admits, are more precious now. He has a strong sense of place. He lives in a house which his father owned, in the English Chilterns, and sleeps in the bed where his father died. But Mortimer is not easy on himself. He rises at dawn to write and does so until lunchtime. His output is impressive with the tally of novels, plays, scripts and essays in high double figures.
He sinks a bit in the afternoon. "I can become quite depressed and glum," he says. Then, why doesn't he stay in bed and work from there since he writes with pen and paper anyway? He's aghast. His red cheeks become, well, redder. Staying in bed late would be a defeat. "And I wouldn't be able to work at all if I was horizontal."
He has been married twice, both times to women called Penny. The first, the late novelist, Penelope Mortimer, tended towards the melodramatic, and would descend into melancholia. "But it was never dull with her."
His present wife is 24 years his junior. Mortimer enthuses about age-gap relationships: "They're very exciting". The second Penny is a passionate huntswoman who knows everyone John Mortimer doesn't. She has come hunting to Co Westmeath and also to Co Cork as a guest of Jeremy Irons and his wife, Sinead Cusack. The Mortimers were once well-in with the Blairs as well, but are less so these days. They used dine out at Chequers: "I don't suppose we'll be going there anymore".
He dislikes New Labour's record on civil rights, asylum-seekers, jury trials and Jack Straw. "But," he adds, "a Conservative government would be an unmitigated disaster. I could vote Liberal Democrat but I don't think so. I'll probably vote Labour again and reform it from within. I'm not a Green. I need a motor car to get me around."
Mortimer means well but it's not always possible to hear what he says. He has a thin walkingstick by his side and although every movement is complicated, he still travels widely in order to sell books. He also visits Italy every summer, dropping in on Muriel Spark, or meeting up with the Kinnocks, also on holiday. He was particularly chummy with director Franco Zeffirelli for whom he wrote the script for his semi-autobiographical Tea with Mussolini.
The penning of words means a lot to Mortimer. "Writing is what I think about when I'm not thinking about sex." He sits slightly forward, turns his horn-rimmed spectacles towards me almost conspiratorially. "You know the Daily Telegraph put it on the front page that I had lecherous thoughts all the time?" He seems boyishly chuffed by the exaggeration, or ever on the alert for a good line. Did he mind? He hesitates, shakes his head and sits back, a spent force. Mortimer is fooling no one. He doesn't have the energy he once had and sometimes he forgets.
We get back to his scribbling. "It really is the most important thing," he says. What about your wife? "Oh yes, she's first . . . and the children." He has two children from each of his marriages, and four step-children. He enthuses about the young but grudgingly admits the old have a role too. "I suppose it's quite nice to share memories with people of your own age. But there aren't many of them around."
He was an only child with a blind barrister father and a mother who read aloud to her husband and described the plants in the garden he tended. "I grew up not dependent on a lot of people but I don't like being alone," says Mortimer, "especially not in the evenings. I can manage during the day. I'd hate not to be married." It's a recurring theme, this craving for company and fascination with conviviality.
He usually goes to Morocco in January for the sunshine. He talks valiantly about wheelchairs and the ignominy of being forever gazing into crotches at cocktail parties. He likes women more than men. "They are much more interesting. Hell is a dinner party with a group of male chartered accountants in black ties talking about golf."
His new book, anecdotes on "a year of growing old disgracefully", is littered with names . . . he goes out to dine and meets Dickie Attenborough. Peter Mandelson dances with Mortimer's wife. "Ah, the North of Ireland . . ." he says, "it's like Palestine without the sunshine."
Penny travels more than he does these days. "I let her go," he says. She left for Cuba, giving him a signet ring for his birthday engraved with a dormouse, the furry creature who inspired the title of his most recent book, The Summer of a Dormouse. It emanated from a quote by his hero, Lord Bryon, about the brevity of life. On Mortimer's left hand is a ring made from a brooch which he gave to his mother, as a child. Having spent her adult life being someone else's eyes, Mortimer expected great things of her when his father died. "I thought my mother would feel totally liberated and free but she didn't change her life at all."
Mortimer hasn't consciously suffered from ageism. "My writing has always been accepted." He is preparing an adaptation of Aesop's Fables for television and has more Rumpole stories in the offing. He has a new play opening at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in the new year and will sacrifice Morocco to sit in on rehearsals in Leeds. He gets around. He even talked to students in UCD. "I was amazed when so many of them bought my books. You know, students don't usually buy hardbacks. They must be presents for their dads . . ."
He's not edgy or touchy and there's no evidence of his being a grouch either. But one gets the impression of a man who, despite the banter, has not fully come to terms with his age. Sure, he jokes about it but there's a sting. "I just hope I can go on," he says soulfully.
The Summer of a Dormouse is published by Viking (£16.99 in the UK)