HONESTY is, of course, the best policy – but there are times when blind panic gets in the way.

I'd come home from work after a particularly hard week and I was in need of a bit of love and affection. Instead, my wife caught me off guard with a cross face and a stern question: "Have you eaten Jack's Easter egg?"

The tone of her voice told me this was potentially serious, and my brain wasn't working particularly well, so I instinctively found myself saying "no".

And, as I suspect many dads will understand, once the answer's been given and a few seconds have elapsed, there's no going back.

She stomped off into the lounge to confront Max, 18, who is the only one left who can share the blame. Come September, he'll be off to university and it'll all be down to me.

"Did you eat Jack's Easter egg?" his mother asked him and, again, the answer was "no".

There was a definite tension in the air as I heard her say: "Well, it must be those mice again."

My mum always used to blame "that ghost" if no one owned up when we were kids. With my wife, it's "those mice".

Anyway, a number of weeks have now passed so I'm hoping that's enough time to use this latest column as a confessional and admit that I did indeed eat Jack's Easter egg. Well, sort of.

He'd left it half-eaten on a chair in the corner of the dining room when he'd gone back to university. So, in the strictest terms, I wasn't lying when I said I hadn't eaten his Easter egg. I'd only eaten half of it. The half he'd left behind.

I was on my own, watching Match of the Day on the dining room television, and the lure of half an Easter egg simply proved too much.

Jack was due to be away for an eight-week term anyway and, unless my wife was going to send a half-eaten Easter egg in the post, it wasn't going to be very appetising by the time he came home.

Look, I know it was wrong and I'm sorry. From now on, I promise to tell the truth – unless she sounds especially scary. Then it'll be down to those mice again.

IS IT A BIRD, IS IT A PLANE, NO IT'S SOAPERMAN!

THERE'S fella I know called Kevin: nice bloke, successful businessman and doting dad. Like a lot of us middle-aged dads, he hasn't got the hair he once had.

When he arrived at work at his Tyneside company recently, his staff were a bit concerned. "What's wrong with your head?" asked a colleague.

There was genuine concern about the unusual white dressing on Kevin's head. Maybe he'd had an accident or an operation, the staff were wondering.

Puzzled, Kevin put his hand to his head and felt something hard. And then he remembered...he'd been in a bit of a rush to get ready that morning and had lost the soap in the shower.

He'd given up looking but now he'd found it – actually caked to the side of his head.

Now, I know this all sounds unlikely but it's absolutely true. God knows how long he'd have been walking round with a bar of soap on his head if his colleague hadn't asked.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

THANK you to the ladies of Saltburn Methodist Monday At Eight Club, and assorted guests, who had me as their guest speaker this week and paid me with a generous cheque to the Butterwick Children's Hospice.

President Sheila Macfarlane remembered the time she was teaching near Glasgow and a geography teacher at her school had just completed a project on the Vikings.

It led to a little boy describing to his family how the Vikings lived in tents made of animal skins and shacks.

"They had no carpets on the floor – but there was plenty of rough mating," he added.

THANKS also to my colleague Gavin Havery for telling me how, on election night, a Labour canvasser knocked at the door to ask if she could count on his support.

Three-year old Finn piped up and asked: “Daddy, why has that lady got a rosette – did she win a race?”