GRUMPY old men are just a myth. It’s women who are really raging in old age, research indicates.

Far from following the lead of Victor Meldrew, elderly men are calm old buffers who refuse to fly off the handle. Their womenfolk, on the other hand, have been boiling with anger since they were young, a situation that fails to improve with age.

The grumpy old women do score over men in one respect, however; they are much better at hiding their anger.

“Victor Meldrew was the exception and not the rule,” Jane Barnett, of Middlesex University, said in reference to Richard Wilson’s permanently cross character in the hit television show One Foot in the Grave.

She added that the Grumpy Old Women television programme, featuring people such as Janet Street-Porter and Germaine Greer ranting at a succession of irritants, was far better at reflecting reality than its counterpart Grumpy Old Men.

Miss Barnett, presenting a study of anger and the sexes to a British Psychological Society conference, said that she had looked at how levels of fury changed over the years.

She questioned 153 people about issues that angered them and marked their levels of fury on a scale of one to four. At the bottom end they would be “not very angry”, rising at the top of the scale to “very, very angry”.

To her surprise, rather than follow the stereotype of male anger and reasonable female calm the women showed themselves to be far crosser than men. Once organised into age brackets it became clear that although men and women showed the same levels of anger aged 18 to 25, their responses sharply diverged as they aged.

By the time they are heading for their 40th birthday men are far less easily angered and the downward trend continues, though not at the same rate, during the ages of 41 to 60. Women’s anger levels remain the same throughout their lives and by the time they collect their pensions they are as aerated as the day they began their careers.

The study backed up previous research indicating that there is a gender difference in what makes people angry.

Men were far more likely to be infuriated by the actions of strangers and inanimate objects while what made women most cross were the people they were closest to. Frustration at failing to meet personal goals was the same for men and women.

Miss Barnett told the conference in Manchester yesterday that more research was needed into why men calm down while women “remain simmering” through the ages.

Nina Myskow, who appeared on the BBC Two programme Grumpy Old Women said: “Women are much grumpier because they have to deal with grumpy old men who are the saddest creatures on God’s earth. If you watched both programmes, Grumpy Old Men and Women then you would see that women rose above everything with humour while men just sat and festered.”

The 58-year-old writer and broadcaster added: “It’s harder for women to cope with old age. Men go grey around the temples and that is OK, but for women it is harder. We make jokes and point out that any woman over 45 should never wave goodbye while wearing a sleeveless frock.”

Rick Wakeman, 55, one of the grumpy old men, asked: “Was the paper prepared by a lady then? I mean that is as useful as asking a man to comment on whether women have period pains or not. Was this statement written by someone at the University of Middlesex? Are they trying to turn it back into a polytechnic or something?” The musician added: “If this is all the University of Middlesex can come up with then remind me not to send my kids there.”

The Times journalist Matthew Parris, another grumpy old man, added: “The forced smile of a grumpy old woman denying she is in a strop is just another cross that men have to bear.”

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