Presidential hopeful John McCain, who turns 134 next week, has denied being too old and has launched an attack on "cheeky young whippersnappers" in the media. McCain also used the opportunity to remind the press that he was shot down and tortured in Vietnam and not, as widely believed, in the Western Front during World War One.

Speaking to the press from the cryogenics chamber on his campaign bus, McCain said that "cheeky young whippersnappers" in the media like Tom Brokaw, 91, and Larry King, 104, had deliberately tried to confuse him on issues by unfairly asking him to remember past events, like what he did last week.

He also said he had no regrets over spitting his dentures at Brokaw during this week's second presidential debate.

"These punks in the media, with their watchamacallits, ApplePods and Walkmans and suchlike — they got no respect for tradition," he said, while an aide tightened his bolts.

He said modern America had become too obsessed with technologies like "long-playing rock-and-roll music discs and electronic facsimile machines".

"The Republican party has always been clear on the issue of technology: as long as you've got a good rifle, your woman has got a good spinning-wheel, and your Negroes have got a good plough, you don't need anything else."

He said Americans had forgotten the values that made the country great because their lives had become too easy.

"When I was kid I would walk 300 miles to work, then get tortured by the Viet Cong, earn a dime for three years' work, then walk 500 miles home," he said.

He explained that the walk home had been 200 miles further because while he was out "a twister would always come and whoop my Maw and Paw and their homestead away".

He also accused the media of distorting the truth around his capture and torture at the hands of the Viet Cong.

"For the record, I was brought down over Vietnam, and held by the Viet Cong.

"I was not, as has been widely reported, shot down by the Red Baron over the Somme and held captive in Berlin from 1915 to 1919 before my release was negotiated by Woodrow Wilson."

He confirmed that he had in fact flown some missions over the Somme in 1917, and that the Red Baron had once slapped him with a pair of riding gloves during a duel at 10 000 feet, and that he been a close friend of Woodrow Wilson, but he insisted that this had all been part of a "dim and distant youth, and not relevant to this election, which is all about reminding Americans how dangerous and brutal the outside world really is".

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