During her recent barnstorming campaign Hillary Clinton was heckled by two teenage boys. They kept on shouting "Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt!". Even Clinton thought this was quite funny, and it's possible that the boys were killed by their mothers when they got home, writes Ann Marie Hourihane.
But sometimes, with middle-aged women cruising Topshop and middle-aged men trembling before the breathalyser, you have to wonder about teenage behaviour: when does it stop?
Take the case of Nicolas Sarkozy (52), the president of France. Sarkozy was elected in May 2007, was divorced in October and started dating super-model Carla Bruni in November. His ex-wife Cecilia has a book coming out early this year.
That must be why, at his most important annual press conference at the Elysée Palace on Tuesday, after talking for an hour about "the new civilisation" he hopes to bring to France, Sarkozy found the time to hint that he will be getting married shortly.
If Sarkozy was a teenage boy his mother would take him aside and mutter encouraging remarks about taking a break, joining some social clubs and enjoying his single status before rushing headlong into another relationship. Any agony aunt worth her salt would do the same thing.
Perhaps one of the more modern agony aunts would encourage him to find himself and to try and root his self-esteem in something other than sexual partnerships.
But unfortunately Sarkozy is a middle-aged man, which means there is no stopping him. Not for him the shiny new motorbike or the expensive boat or any of the other consolations of male middle age. It's Carla or nothing.
Sarkozy is also very teenaged in his defiant attitude towards telling the truth. He castigates other politicians for telling lies about their private lives and publicly disdains hypocrisy.
As many a weary adult has had to explain, there is a reason that people do not share the details of their private lives and of their love affairs with the wider general public. For a neo-conservative, Sarkozy seems very close to the liberal and rebellious generation of the 1960s. At any moment now you can expect him to shout "All the kids are doing it!", in French.
Eight months into a disappointing presidency, Sarkozy is showing all the signs of undergoing the male menopause, a severely under-reported condition. Whilst Hillary Clinton's spreading waistline and sagging chin have been picked over in the American press, no one has suggested the real problem with Sarkozy: he's hormonal, poor thing. A text-book case.
I predict that in the near future, after a lot of exorbitantly expensive medical research, the male menopause will be identified as a dangerous syndrome. But by that time it may be too late for western civilisation. After all, we are usually ruled by men in their 50s who for a variety of reasons - mainly the madness of our political system, but also their own egotism - lack stable domestic relationships.
George Bush and Tony Blair were the exceptions to this. George had Laura - although he still seems to have gone bonkers on his own - and Tony was having a secret affair with the Catholic Church on, as it were, the side.
Other male leaders are not so circumspect. There is a long list of expensive toys, of mistresses maintained at public expense and of irrational behaviour in high places which testifies to the prevalence of the male menopause in public life.
To think of how Margaret Thatcher was castigated for taking HRT! Of course, middle- aged men take lovers for reasons quite apart from the male menopause: pleasure, for example, and boredom, sometimes even love itself. But it is the display aspect of the Nicolas Sarkozy-Carla Bruni relationship that is teenaged, and this seems to be the point that riles the French public.
In one of the lovelier press criticisms of a serving politician, L'Est Republicainstates that the French public did not elect Sarkozy to become a rock star, and then goes on: "He forgot that he would have a romance with France."
In this ménage, it seems, France has assumed the role of the first wife. (Sarkozy's real first wife was from Corsica). But in any event the French don't like it.
A poll on Monday in the Liberationnewspaper found that 63 per cent of French respondents think that Sarkozy is revealing too much about his private life. Bruni may already have done so. She said last year that she could never be monogamous, which is a very teenaged thing for a 39-year-old woman to come out with, whatever she might privately believe.
It is interesting, and rather frightening, to see the head of a nuclear power acting with such abandon.
Sarkozy's admiration for America seems to have led him along the path of rampant individualism to the dangerous doctrine of self-fulfilment at all costs. Of course this is only a phase, but it does make you wonder about male politicians in general.
Thank God our lads are only interested in money.