THE previous Dad At Large column, about how panic in the face of my wife’s questioning led to a lie, clearly struck a chord.

A number of dads got in touch to sympathise after I confessed that I’d failed to tell the truth when I was asked by my wife if I’d eaten our son’s Easter egg.

Frightened by the tone of her voice, I’d responded instinctively with a firm “no” even though I’d scoffed it while I was watching Match of the Day on my own. To repeat, for the record, it was only half an Easter egg so it wasn’t a lie in the fullest sense.

Nevertheless, it still meant I had to hide the paper containing the column in which I’d confessed. A fortnight later, it’s still shoved under the settee to avoid her discovering the truth.

In the meantime, I take comfort in the knowledge that there are other dads out there who have lied in the face of interrogation from their wives.

I am particularly grateful to Steve – I can’t give his full identity for fear of reprisals – who wrote to tell me how he’d been asked by his furious wife if he’d eaten the chocolate decorations hanging from the Christmas tree.

“We don’t have any kids yet, so I blamed the dog,” he explained.

There is a black Labrador living in Durham who can’t understand why he was in the doghouse for a week after Christmas on the back of a stern lecture about leaving the chocolates on the tree well alone.

“I felt terrible, but telling the truth wasn’t an option,” said Steve.

But I’m delighted to say it’s not just us dads who are secret chocolate thieves.

Phil, from Darlington, was eager to tell me how his wife Karen had actually mastered the art of stealing pieces from her children’s Easter eggs without anyone being able to tell.

She would delicately fold back the foil wrapping, surgically remove a section of chocolate with a sharp knife, and then cover up the holes with the foil again.

Over the course of a week, there would be a perfect egg-shaped shell of foil, holding itself together, with hardly any chocolate to be found inside.

You see, us dads may be cowardly fibbers, but it is mums who are the devious criminal masterminds.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

THANK you to David Allaway, Mayoral support officer for Darlington Borough Council, for a memory from his daughter Kirsty’s childhood.

David’s neighbours had at least a dozen cats and his patience had been tested from time to time.

One day, he was walking up the drive after finishing his shift as a police inspector, and Kirsty – seven at the time – ran up to him in a state of great excitement.

“Daddy, Daddy, I’ve pissed the cat off,” she exclaimed.

David feared the worst and, hesitantly, asked what she meant.

“Well, I made it run away by going pssssst,” came the reply.

ON a similar theme, thank you also to Greg Marshall, of Darlington, who remembered the time he’d been having a spot of bother with a neighbour’s noisy dog, but had retained a diplomatic position.

Unlike daughter Hannah, four at the time, who looked the neighbour in the eye, pointed at the mutt, and declared: “My Dad says that dog’s a bloody nuisance.”

KIDS have a habit of embarrassing you – just ask Hayley Jones, of Hurworth, near Darlington. She was walking round Primark when twoyear- old son Henry started shouting “Erection! Erection!”

Hayley breathed a sigh of relief when she realised he was pointing at a One Direction T-shirt – his sister’s favourite band.