I remember Jeremy Irons once commenting on how society really supported you when you became a father, then finding that, for those of us on the nether slopes of Mount Olympus, society can nastily tighten its grip on your short and curlies. This Oxford-educated writer/journalist and father-of-two has survived it well, despite the lines, grey hair and sunken eyes with a "look of startled hostility". He is blithe about his planned pregnancies, the farts in ante-natal classes, his typically unilluminating birth scene (they took the epidural), naming, nappy-changing ("a nexus of beauty and squalor") and the "anger mountain" of parental rows. There are lots of laughs here, too, although you have to wade for them. My own stock dinner-table yarn is of the queasy vindication of opening up the first breast-fed nappy-sandwich, and finding it just like the public health nurse said it would be: "yellow, with the consistency of scrambled eggs". Will that be rare or well-done, sir?