MY wife took a phone call in the kitchen from our 20-year-old daughter and it was immediately obvious that it was a matter of great excitement.

From the snatches of conversation – “Ooh, how exciting”... “When did this happen?”... and “Have you said you will?”... I was able to draw on my investigative skills and deduce that my baby girl had a date.

It was hard to tell who was more excited, my daughter or my wife.

“What’s happened?” I asked, desperate to feel part of things, but I was waved away, dismissively, while they carried on chatting.

A few minutes later, I was summoned back to the phone. “Hannah’s been asked out on a date and he says he’s a Sky Sports reporter,” my wife explained.

The young man’s name will be kept secret to spare his blushes, but I was asked if I’d ever heard of him on the grounds that I watch a lot of sport on TV. I replied that the name didn’t ring a bell and this was relayed back to my daughter.

“Quick,” said my wife, turning back to me. “Google him, Google him.”

I have to admit that I felt a bit uncomfortable doing a computer search on someone I’d never met but, by now, I was just as curious as the women in my life to check him out.

I quickly typed his name into my iPad and, sure enough, he was a Sky Sports reporter, and not the smoothtalking charlatan with a boring job I’d suspected.

Google confirmed he was based in Leeds, which is where my daughter is at dance school, and he seemed to have done pretty well for himself.

He’d even been part of the Sky team covering the Australian Open tennis tournament. Not bad for a 25-year-old.

“Yep, he does work for Sky Sports,” I dutifully reported to my wife. “He’s based in Leeds and he’s 25.”

“Dad says he’s definitely a Sky Sports reporter and he’s 25,” my wife announced to my daughter.

I was then given another instruction: “See if there’s a picture of him.”

I searched under “images” and there he was: clean-cut, fresh-faced, smiley, and looking younger than 25.

I showed my wife, we nodded at each other, and our approval was passed on: “Me and Dad both think he looks nice.”

If the poor lad knew what was going on in our kitchen, I’m pretty sure he’d have run a mile, but this is now the world we live in. The internet has made boyfriend-checking simple and irresistible.

Shortly afterwards, I went for a drink with a few mates and told them about Googling my daughter’s date.

“Oh, I did that,” said one.

“Yeah, me too,” said another.

Indeed, subsequent checks have shown that it is now common practice for dads to take to their computers to check on their daughters’ boyfriends.

For the record, my daughter went on a couple of dates with her Sky Sports suitor, but it wasn’t to be.

I sincerely hope that none of the above puts off any young men who are thinking of asking a girl out on a date.

But they should be under no illusion – there are countless dads out there, playing “I spy with my little iPad”.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

The last of the anecdotes from Wentworth Park Women’s Institute at Ouston, County Durham… EMILY Hepburn told how Luke, aged two-and-a-half, saw his grandpa using an electric shaver.

This was a novelty for Luke because his dad preferred to wet shave.

The little lad ran to his dad and shouted: “Dad, dad, grandpa’s ironing his face.”

JOYCE Guthrie remembered the time she and her family were staying at Seahouses, in Northumberland, and they’d visited a village called Rock to look for an ancestor’s grave.

When they found it, grandson Francis shouted: “Granddad, look – that’ll be your next home!”

ROSS Wake recalled the time grandson Harvey, aged three-and-ahalf, was growing tired of the attention his new baby sister was receiving.

He became particularly impatient when his Auntie Marjorie, known to be a chatterbox, outstayed her welcome.

The little lad went up to her and blurted out: “I think your house is missing you, Auntie Marjorie.”