‘Is Dave trying just a little too hard to be cool?’ ran the headline in a national newspaper, after David Cameron was pictured wearing a pair of trendy headphones usually sported by pop stars and supermodels.

It is not the first time the Prime Minister has been mocked for supposed attempts to be cool. After being exposed as never watching ‘I’m A Celebrity…’, he landed himself in hot water after claiming to have voted on X-Factor, for a singer who never appeared on the show.

I’m by no means a supporter of ‘Dave’, as he once claimed his wife calls him - prompting further discussion on attempts to be cool - and loathe any public school, Oxbridge-educated politician’s efforts to appear like the common man, but I sympathise over this issue.

I feel sorry for Dave because I know what it’s like to be ridiculed for what is perceived as attempts to be ‘cool’, or ‘street’, or ‘hip’ or whatever. I get criticism from my daughters, for what they see as attempts to enter their world. “That’s too young for you,” they will say about clothing, or “that’s cringey,” when I attempt to use text abbreviations. Like Dave, for a long time I thought LOL was ‘Lots of Love’. I mean, whoever uses the phrase ‘Laugh Out Loud?’ It sounds ridiculous, yet it’s among the many ‘cool’ expressions which young people use to communicate.

York Press:

Achingly cool? The Prime Minister on holiday with his wife, Samantha

“Can I have your earphones because you will never use those?” my youngest daughter asked when I got a new phone. I told her that I might use them. “You wouldn’t know what to do with them,” she scoffed.

She is right, of course. I won’t ever use them, because I am not sufficiently ‘cool’ (or fit) to join those Lycra-clad people who jog down the street with bits of wire dangling from their ears, while ‘shuffling’ (isn’t that the ‘cool’ word for selecting from the playlist?) between Justin Bieber and Rita Ora.

Men appear to suffer more than women in perceived attempts to be cool. The internet is crawling with images of middle-aged, ‘uncool’ dads, with their attempts to cultivate edgy hair styles, wear trendy clothes and get down with the kids.

You have to ask yourself what is ‘cool’? I remember a couple of years ago when the late David Bowie’s son bought him a Father’s Day card which read: ‘You may not be the coolest dad…’ alongside a picture of a man wearing a hoodie, trying to use teen-speak.

If he isn’t cool, there’s no hope for the rest of us. We middle-aged-young-at-heart really can’t win. David Cameron was lambasted for his attempts at coolness after showing up at a music festival in matching shorts and sandals, wearing designer-style sunglasses. Sensible attire, I would say. It’s not as if he was wearing low-slung jeans, had his nose pierced and hair matted with dreadlocks. Maybe then he’d be seen as genuinely cool - possibly too cool to be Prime Minister.