I was chatting to a bunch of twentysomethings recently about which women they admired. “I’m a big Judi Dench person,” said one. Another proclaimed a passion for Helen Mirren. There was much warm agreement. But, I protested, these dames could be your grandmas. What about — I dunno — Scarlett Johansson? Well, they liked to see what she wore. But Helen and Judi had presence, dignity, were above the celebrity fray.

It is almost as easy to patronise the young as it is to disregard the old. And in dropping Arlene Phillips from Strictly Come Dancing, the BBC has pulled off the double. Don’t you love the slippery corporate dissembling of BBC One controller Jay Hunt?

This wasn’t about binning the older bird — as per Selina, Moira, Sue Lawley — like some broadcasting equivalent of Logan’s Run. Nope, this was just “refreshing the brand”. Funny how Arlene, 66, gets refreshed into a ten-minute slot on The One Show, while octogenarian Brucie, who these days speaks with his nose pressed against the autocue, is an untouchable national treasure.

Yet what is almost worse is treating younger viewers like simpletons: Hey, kids, you dig Cheryl Cole on The X Factor — well, you’ll love Alesha Dixon. Yeah, she too is “hot”, doe-eyed and likely to well up over a contestant’s “emotional journey”, rather than bark out agonising alliterative abuse like that old lemon-sucker Arlene.

Strictly is only “an entertainment show”, shrugged Hunt. But whether she likes it or not, it is much more. Contestants become, for a few months anyway, characters in our collective story. Winners are elevated to heroes: how they are chosen and by whom truly matters. And Strictly works because the show’s conceit is that a bunch of inexperienced amateurs — mostly young — are learning a craft. They are schooled, slagged off, raised up and ultimately judged by those gnarled with age and wisdom. The judges are there to be feared, not fancied. The latter is what the contestants are for. And watching these hitherto static stars dance is probably our closest simulacrum to how they’d be in bed.

But an appearance of rigour and integrity is vital for those of us who loathe brain-dead Big Brother or that freak-fest Britain’s Got Talent because we need the wholegrain of intelligence in our reality-TV loaf. We follow The Apprentice because it contains just enough rudimentary lessons in entrepreneurship to make you believe you’re watching to fine-tune your business start-up plan rather than to see 15 self-deluded fools in Next office-wear scream at each other in car parks. And it is on the opinion of snow-topped Margaret and Nick that the contestants’ fates depend. Suralan’s “eyes and ears” are probably the most revered oldsters on national television: age is almost their superpower, enabling them to see straight through flip-chart faddery and boardroom bluster right into a contestant’s true character.

And with a lot more vaudeville and ill-applied orange pancake, the Strictly judges do the same. Removing Phillips goes beyond the timeless telly trajectory of old-bag presenter swapped for young popsy; it states categorically that the accumulated expertise of older women has no public value (otherwise Arlene would at least have been swapped for another dance professional). That Phillips has spent 40-odd years choreographing West End shows, teaching Albert Finney to tap-dance, wrangling the divas’ diva Diana Ross and making Sarah Brightman cry counts for nada. Not against the fresh flesh of Alesha, who has no dance experience beyond winning the darn show. Jay Hunt has much in common with Silvio Berlusconi, whose gorgeous new equality minister was, until recently, a topless model.

That Cheryl Cole fans can be surgically grafted on to Alesha seems unlikely, since even I can see that the former is way cooler, a proper pop star whose footballer marriage has a gripping tabloid arc. But in any case, why is the BBC worried that Strictly is beloved of older viewers? Now that young people spend more time online than in front of the box, middle-aged viewers should be rewarded for their reliability and appreciativeness when given a good show with personalities past puberty.

Besides, whatever the marketeers maintain, youth and age are no longer polar opposites. Thanks to music downloads and a gazillion digital channels, everyone mashes up eras and artists. My sons love Top Gear and Dad’s Army, the Clash and Kings of Leon. A while back, I asked my elder boy why he was looking a bit glum, and he replied: “I just heard that Humphrey Lyttelton [86] died.” At Glastonbury, when Tom Jones (69) performed Delilah, 100,000 hipsters followed the lines “She stood there laughing” with a perfectly synchronised “Ha-ha-ha-ha!” They paid court to the Specials and Madness (fiftysomethings), Bruce Springsteen (59) and Neil Young (63). Talent and style transcend age.

And Jay Hunt is ignoring the BBC’s own recent Taste and Standards report, which noted that age “is not always a guarantee of agreed attitudes, standards and values”, citing a woman in her seventies who shared a fondness for Jonathan Ross with her 32-year-old hairdresser, and a significant percentage of older viewers who loved the sweary naughtiness of Little Britain. Friendships between the ages are more common than ever before now that the generations are not divided by sexual mores. Indeed, while interviewing the 62-year-old fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg recently, I was struck by how those surviving 1970s chicks — Arlene Phillips, Joanna Lumley, Helen Mirren — have much to teach younger women about forging a look that isn’t cloned off the internet, and working and partying hard.

They are deeply cool, these women, full of gravitas, wickedness and warmth. This TV formula of old guy/young babe is starting not just to look outmoded but plain weird. How can it match viewers’ desires, now that the population bulges with vigorous, engaged and funky baby- boomers? Even looks-obsessed America lets older women — Diane Sawyer, Connie Chung, Barbara Walters — speak on major events, rather than just daytime twaddle. Any minute now I expect Kirsty Wark to be replaced by screeching Fearne Cotton, whose look-at-me idiocy annually spoils the Oscars.

Perhaps Jay Hunt should consider that older women pay their licence fee, too. And if you replace St Margaret Mountford with anyone under 40, don’t expect us to pay.

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