Doris and I are squaring up on a Nintendo Wii games console. We are playing the bowling game. “Be fierce!” she says, shoving me on the arm. “Fierce! Come on! Push the button! Two pins left? Not bad.” Doris is quite a lot better at this than I am. She is 91.

I am in the small town of Tenbury Wells, near Leominster in Herefordshire, at an Age Concern afternoon in a Scout hut. There has been tea, there have been biscuits, and now there are Nintendo video games. At the front of the hall, a line of grey heads bob keenly over their paddles, under the strict but patient tutelage of a pair of teenagers. Young and old, in unholy alliance.

Instructors aside, there are about 40 people here. The rules state that you have to be over 50. Most people are quite a lot older than that. Doris Griffiths is one of them. She didn't play last week because the machine was too noisy. She played cards instead. This week it is quieter and, moments after learning what to do, Doris is on fire.

The highlight of the afternoon is her titanic struggle with 80-year-old Gladys Rogers. They stand side by side, plastic controllers in hand, lobbing virtual bowling balls down a virtual alley. Everybody who isn't asleep or looking the other way is on the edge of their seat. When Doris scores a strike, there is cheering.

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“Whatever you can do, I can do better,” says Gladys, grimly, and scores a strike of her own.

“We played the darts game last week,” says David Loveridge, who is 35 and here for different reasons entirely. “Some of the men liked that. Those are the good ones - that and the bowling. They're familiar. People get the concept.”

Loveridge is from Help the Aged, which provided funding to allow Age Concern Leominster to obtain all this fantastic shiny kit. “We'd like a Wii Balance Board,” he says, “for real exercise. Maybe that's next.”

Exercise is part of the point but not all of it. Mainly, these Wii Wednesdays are supposed to be a social gathering, and a way of connecting the elderly with the world of the young. At present there is only one Nintendo Wii, four controllers, a few games and a huge flat-screen television. They have had it for a fortnight. It moves between this centre in Leominster, another in Kingstone, 20 miles away, and a couple of mobile centres that travel around. It's not all about games. On other days there are lessons in how to use mobile phones and how to e-mail your grandchildren, even if they live in Australia. “One day, maybe video-calling,” says Loveridge. “Maybe Skype.”

“We cover 400 miles in this area,” says Colette Coleman, 45, the chief executive of Age Concern Leominster. “And it's all rural. Some of these people might not see another human if they didn't come here.” Most are ferried to and from the centre by a network of drivers. Eventually, the plan is to have the drivers double up as Wii instructors.

Today's instructors are two teenagers, Jack and James Goodwin, aged 14 and 16. They are the grandsons of one of Coleman's colleagues. This intergenerational aspect excites Loveridge and Coleman greatly. Geriatrics and teenagers do not necessarily mix. Yet here they are, bonding over video games.

Doris scores a strike. Gladys scores another. Things could turn ugly.

Silver Wii action is not confined to Herefordshire. In the US the craze is not even news any more. Nintendo has been seen touring the conventions of AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons. Retirement homes have Wii bowling leagues, Wii baseball leagues, even Wii boxing leagues.

One survey has estimated that a quarter of Americans over 50 play video games regularly. Some will have been playing Pac-Man in their twenties. In the UK, where games caught on more slowly, a smattering of experiments have been met with more suspicion. Still, it will catch on. Five years from now, expect the average family Christmas to involve the under- 20s and over-70s in a conspiratorial, technological huddle, scorning the working-age adults whenever they suggest a nice walk.

Doris dispatches Gladys and a new game begins. Thankfully, the concept of “winner stays on” hasn't caught on here, otherwise she would be up all afternoon. Even in defeat, Gladys is pretty pleased. Last week she scored only two strikes. Today she got loads. “They are all much, much better,” says Loveridge, proudly. “Come back in six months. They'll be unstoppable.” After the first session, a few members of the group went on a trip to the bowling alley in Leominster to see how it was done for real.

For those of you between the ages of 35 and 75, the Nintendo Wii is a new sort of games console. Most computer games involve multiple buttons and joysticks, and involve blowing things up or smashing them to pieces with an axe. Games on the Wii are more simple - often just digital versions of life off-screen. “I used to play this on grass,” says Margaret Ferris, 80.

Most importantly, playing them requires some movement. On other machines you might play a bowling game by pressing “fire”. On the Wii you make a sweeping bowling movement with your arm, and release a trigger.

The group playing now are all sitting down. Robert Siviter, a whippersnapper of 68, is bowling overarm - with, it has to be said, limited success. “You should have seen me at Leominster,” he shouts.

It's not perfect, admittedly. Patient heroes that they are, young Jack and James do have to say “press the A button” quite a lot. Some people forget to let go of the trigger, some press several buttons at once, some seem a touch baffled by the interface. Still, it's a million miles from watching your great aunt trying to play Grand Theft Auto.

Jack and James have a Wii at home. Jack confides that James is actually pretty good at the bowling game, and gets strikes all the time. He says it quietly, so none of the older players gets upset. Doris, I think, could take him on. She certainly makes mincemeat of me. “Never mind,” she twinkles, patting me on the arm. “You'll get the hang of it.”

Get fit with your Wii:

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