His face was lined, his hair was grey and his voice was not as strong as it used to be. Sir Paul McCartney has just turned 80. But on Saturday night he sent the Glastonbury crowd into a delirium of joy. Playing for nearly three hours, he gave - in the words of critic Neil McCormick - "one of the most thrilling, uplifting, banger-filled, star-studded sets this 50-plus-year-old festival had ever seen".

Earlier, another legendary star, 78-year-old Diana Ross, had got even the security guards dancing.

"Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" McCartney had written in a jokey song more than half a century earlier. On this occasion, it was the festival-goers eating out of his hand. As McCormick noted in the Sunday Telegraph, "You really haven't heard a singalong until you have heard 200,000 voices bellowing the na-na-nas of Hey Jude into a starry Somerset night sky".

The Times's reviewer, Will Hodgkinson, agreed: "We were in the presence of greatness... it was a remarkable show, as moving as it was impressive and epic in the best sense of the word."

Other pensioner performers also delighted the spectators. One of McCartney's special guests was 72-year-old Bruce SpringsteenAn American singer known as "The Boss". His best-known albums include Born to Run and Born in the USA.. Robert PlantFormerly the lead singer for Led Zeppelin, he appeared at Glastonbury with bluegrass singer Alison Krauss. had earlier graced the Pyramid StageThe main stage at Glastonbury. Others include Avalon, Wow and the Rabbit Hole., aged 73.

On the night before McCartney, the headliner had been Billie Eilish. Aged 20, she was young enough to be his great-granddaughter. But, Neil McCormick wrote: "Age was nothing but a number at Glastonbury."

Attracting teenagers, couples with young children and ancient hippies alike, the festival "was no battle of the ages".

"Rather it offered an optimistic and celebratory demonstration of the power of music to bridge the generation gap, and fill that space with rhythm and melody."

Even before the festival, the music press was full of the news that Kate Bush had reached number one in the charts at the age of 63, with her song Running Up That Hill.

Will Hodgkinson argues that Glastonbury is "one of the wonders of the modern world", bringing a vast number of disparate people together safely and smoothly. In a video appearance before a set by the Libertines, Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky described it as the planet's "greatest concentration of freedom".

But if Glastonbury is a model society, the rest of the world has a lot of catching up to do - particularly with regard to age.

In Western societies, "old age arouses a visceral aversion, often a 'biological repugnance'," Kate Kirkpatrick writes in Aeon. "Many attempt to push it as far away as possible, denying that it will ever happen."

In her book Old Age, Simone de BeauvoirA French feminist philosopher best known for her book The Second Sex. argued that our fear of ageing causes us to distance ourselves from those who are already old. They are made fun of and seen as "outside society". As a result, they feel lonely and useless.

Yet many old people have a great deal to offer the world. They should be helped to go on contributing.

Yes: As McCartney and Ross's performances show, old people can do amazing things, and a shared passion like music can bring people of all ages together. Some are old for their years, and some young for them.  

No: There is an immense difference between old and young people in terms of energy, experience and attitudes to life. McCartney and Ross recorded most of their best songs when they were still in their twenties.

Or... Attitudes to age vary from culture to culture. In older societies people aspired to be more mature rather than stay young. In Asian countries old people are far more integrated than in the West.