It’s not like I’m permanently stranded in the 90s or anything but something happened this week that brought flashbacks of the magnificent Paul Kaye’s gloriously obnoxious Dennis Pennis.
So I dug them out, had a quick read of a handful and pinged them over. I don’t want to blow my own doo-dah or anything but I’ll say this - this column used to be funny.
One column was about a trip to Manchester where we all stayed in a hotel’s family room for a couple of nights and did our level best to keep a seven-year-old and a four-year-old entertained, which is waaaay harder than it sounds. The whole column, headlined “The princesses of moan”, was a list of every self-entitled gripe from “That tap is too splashy”, “Mummy, she said sorry but I don’t think she means it”, to “Ooh! I need a poo! I want one as well. No! No! Me first.”
Others included a trip to A&E after daughter #2 bust her arm falling off a trampoline, the Christmas daughter #1 left a note out for Santa which read, “Dear Santa, plesese tick in this box if you are real” and the time the boss caught them scribbling in biro all over the face of their Girl’s World and then delivered a world-class, blood-curdling telling off at little more than a whisper. Dear reader, even I was terrified and I hadn’t done anything.Comedy gold.
You know, the funny ones.Looking back on it now the first 100 or so columns read like a manual on how to successfully wing it when raising little kids.