That's my boy!

I've been involved in entertaining (even educating) children for the best part of twenty years now. Inevitably I have had a good deal of contact with parents. And, oh my goodness, there's nothing worse than a parent who keeps banging on about how talented his or her child is...

The problem is that now I'm doing it myself. It started when my son was two. We were in the car and he was sleeping in his car-seat next to me. I decided to profit from this rare moment of calm by luxuriating in an old tape of Richard Burton playing Coriolanus. After half an hour or so, my son awoke from his drowsy sleep. He turned to me and asked, "is this Shakespeare?"

Hats off, gentlemen! A genius I do declare...

So you can imagine my delight when a similar occurence happened just a short while ago. Listening to an indifferent performance of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony on the radio, my son (now aged three) turned to me and asked, "Is this Russian music!"

I beamed pure paternal pride. This boy is really something, I thought.

Unfortunately, my son continued, "it sounds like Bob the Builder music".