WITH just days to go before our long-awaited and richly-deserved silver wedding cruise, my wife has been quivering with excitement.

The man she loves and wants to be with more than anything in the world has been honing his rather buff body in the gym. He’s as hunky and handsome as ever, ageing like a fine wine, and she can’t wait to get her hands on him.

Yes, George Clooney is in town.

Well, when I say town, I mean the beautiful city of Cambridge, which is where our son Jack is studying English. Gorgeous George has been there to direct a Second World War drama called Monuments Men and the papers have been full of how he and fellow star Matt Damon were allowed to use the facilities at a local gym – free!

The gym owner waived the fee – despite the fact the stars are obviously multi-millionaires – while I have to pay £22 a month on direct debit to use the council gym in Darlington.

Anyway, by a quirk of fate, we’d just got back from a trip to Cambridge when my wife heard that Mr Clooney had landed. We’d driven down to take Jack back after his halfterm break and she’d missed her favourite man by a matter of days and was distraught.

Had she known he was going to be there, it is an absolute certainty that we wouldn’t have come back. Well, I might have, but she’d have stayed behind and joined the gym.

It’s a three-hour drive to Cambridge but she was all for going back, citing the excuse that she’d forgotten to pack Jack’s duvet and pillow and he was having to make do with a blanket and by resting his head on a couple of jumpers stuffed inside a pillow case.

I forbade her from making the journey, reminding her that Jack would be home again in a few weeks and the lack of a proper pillow wouldn’t kill him. “But he needs me,” she pleaded. I didn’t answer on the grounds that I knew she wasn’t talking about Jack.

This grown woman, with whom I have spent most of my adult life, then texted her son, instructing him to get her a picture of George. She even told Jack to give George her number – just in case he’d left his duvet and pillow in America, presumably.

Every day for a week, she sent a new text, or made a phone call, asking if Jack had bumped into George.

Then, one night while we were watching telly in the lounge, her phone rang and Jack’s name popped up on the screen. He hardly ever rings so she knew it had to be important.

Could it be, could it be, news of George?

She answered and I could hear Jack whining: “Mum, my desk lamp’s gone out,” as if it was the biggest crisis since Suez. This is typical of Jack – academically clever, but totally lacking in any common sense.

“Jack’s desk lamp has gone out,”

she told me, putting her hand over the phone.

“You’re not going,” I said.

“But...”

“No buts.”

Disconsolately, she reminded Jack that she’d given him a spare bulb for the desk lamp. He found it on the window-sill and shoved it into the lamp. His light came on. My wife’s went out. George flew home the very next day.

PS For the past 25 years, my wife, Heather, has put up with a lot. The long, unpredictable hours of my job here at The Northern Echo, and having intimate details of our family life laid bare in this column.

I owe her a huge debt of thanks.

The things kids say

IAN REEVE, the BBC’s North-East business correspondent passed on a little tale about daughter Hattie’s trip to the Science Museum, where she saw Stephenson’s Rocket.

“How did they get to the moon in that?” she asked.

The things grown men say

WHEN it comes to football, men live in a fantasy world, don’t they?

Last week, I was in the changing room at the Dolphin Centre in Darlington when a bunch of middle-aged blokes came in after a game of five-a-side football.

One of them, wiping sweat from his face, declared: “I’ll tell you what – in all seriousness – if Mally played like that every week, he’d be playing for Barcelona.”