Martin,
If you were banned at a young age, then you are probably allowed to drive now. For really serious offences, you would have been banned from driving for more than 10 years but for any driving ban greater than ten years, you are allowed to request your driving licence back after 5 years. Of course, it is upto the court to remove the ban and inform DVLA to return your licence.
I suggest that you ring the DVLA and ask them when your ban has expired (or will expire). You may need to pay an administration fee for that though. It might also be possible that your ban had expired a long time back because from the looks of it, you are much older now and the ban was imposed a long time back and it would therefore make things much simpler for you to start driving again.