British journalist John Simpson was on hand when the Berlin wall came down, he was there for the fall of communism in Russia and the end of apartheid in South Africa. He saw the 1989 Tiananmen Square atrocities. In 2001, he was the first journalist into the liberated Afghanistan capital Kabul, squeezing through ahead of the Northern Alliance, having already smuggled himself into the country beneath a burqa - a disguise that, at the time, he said worked "superbly".As world affairs editor for the BBC, and a reporter for the organisation for almost half a century, he has dodged bullets and barrel bombs and interviewed Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe (seven times), Vladimir Putin, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher and just about everyone in between.But, despite this vast trove of experience, there is still one cruel reality of life that he does not want to bear witness to: old age and its inevitable descent into illness and incapacity.On a warm afternoon at a London hotel, the 71-year-old is recounting a story about his late friend, the Scottish sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, who had a stroke that put him in a wheelchair and through subsequent years of poor health."I was saying to my wife just the other day, 'If this happens you must slip me a pill'. I don't want to be like that. I don't want her and Rafe [his 10-year-old son] to see me like that. There is more to life than just living and breathing. If life is a distasteful burden, why carry on?"Simpson is not planning for the end, but should the worst happen, he hopes he will have had a nice dinner with friends first - "like my dear, wonderful friend Martha Gellhorn [the US writer and war reporter who had liver and ovarian cancer and swallowed a cyanide capsule at the age of 89]"."She invited us round and cooked us a meal the week before she died," says Simpson. "She was very jolly and talked about her life, the world and where it was going. It was like a thunderbolt when someone rang me and said Martha died last night. But so much better to go when she was still absolutely at the height of her powers than to be a dribbling wreck."Simpson, too, is clearly at the height of his powers, and not just professionally; he became a father for the third time at the age of 61 and is unashamedly besotted with his young son.Simpson's wife, Dee Kruger, 53, had Rafe after five years of trying and four miscarriages. He has two daughters - Julia and Eleanor, both in their 40s - through a previous marriage.He loves all his children, and six grandchildren, but admits he has become obsessed with Rafe.At this late stage in life Simpson had expected to be sitting quietly in a dusty library, an occasional cigar in one hand and a glass of "something encouraging" in the other.The idea of bringing another child into the world had filled him with initial horror. He saw his quiet existence would be upended and envisaged the pages of his first editions being ripped out by rambunctious fists. But, from the moment Rafe was born, Simpson's priorities realigned.Now he watches SpongeBob SquarePants and Scooby-Doo and spends his weekends kicking footballs or bowling at stumps.The issue of his age is hard to ignore. When Rafe was born, there were vociferous headlines questioning whether a child should be fathered by someone of his advanced years.Does he hope he will be around long enough to see Rafe start his own family, as he has with his other children?"I'll be pretty ancient by the time he gets to that age. I'll be in my mid-80s. I'll be lucky if I can read large letters at that stage. We'll see how it goes."More than anything though, he has come to view old age as a state of mind."I saw a friend of mine the other day, Lord Hannay, who is a good 10 years older than me. He looks hale and hearty and is very jolly. He said: 'I decided not to become an old bore'. So, that is what I have decided to do, too." - ©The Daily Telegraph..