Decision Time

Clearly the most important choice I’ll have to make in 2015 is whether to go red or blue. 

I could alwys choose yellow, of course, but nowadays I think people in yellow look untrustworthy. Aside from Izzy, who only ever likes purple, my children would always cast a vote for green, but I’ve never been a green type of person. No – red or blue it must be. 

I’m talking about the colour of my new Lamborghini Huracán, of course. It’s a snip at only £186,760 on the road. I’ve calculated that it will enable me to get Izzy to school roughly 4 seconds faster than at present (this being the extra time it currently takes my Volvo to reach the 20 mile per hour speed limit on the school run).

Flight MH370 - turning a crisis into a Hollywood thriller

Izzy was convinced the missing plane was lost in fog and would go home as soon as it cleared. Just like Mummy when she’s driving, except that she always phones Daddy to come and rescue her, even when he says it’s only mist and she should just follow the white lines. Mummy won’t drive in fog. 

“What if it’s not foggy up in the sky, Izzy?” Jo asked her, quickly changing the subject. 

My daughter looked uncertain, thought hard and then said with far more conviction than the Malaysian prime minister: “Pirates stole it.”

3 - not quite the magic number

The proposed demise of BBC3 has been greeted by howls of rage from its well-remunerated stars (like Jack Whitehall and Russell Kane) and almost complete indifference by the licence payers. 

By yesterday only 150,000 had signed an online petition against the axing, which is about the number that watch the live transmission of the average show, against the hundreds of millions of pounds spent on the network so far. 

Since the network first launched, younger viewers have stubbornly ignored the broadcaster’s efforts to reach them. Which is no fault of BBC3, of course, because everyone knows that the majority of young people find television utterly irrelevant to their lives. 

What do you do at the office, Daddy?

When the teacher at Izzy’s new school invited me to give a talk to the children about my work, Izzy was very excited. 

“I love it when Daddy comes to talk about his work,” she said. 

“Really?” I replied with surprise, trying to remember when I’d been to her previous school to talk about television. I didn’t think I’d even discussed my profession with Izzy. Maybe she had overheard Mummy and Daddy talking about our pitches to the network executives in America. But why would that make her so excited? 

“Daddy, when you come to talk at the school about your work, please can we make cookies as well.” 

That was a bit random. 

“Izzy, what do you think Daddy actually does at work?” 

“You make bread, of course”.