THE Oxo family is back. There they were on Monday night, eating stir-fried something and teasing Dad about Baby Spice. Mum didn't look very mumsy. Dad was a bit of a smoothy and the four children were the nice side of cheeky. But there they all were - a traditional two-parent family, set up as something at least vaguely aspirational, if only to sell stock cubes.

Which is a bit of a relief to some of us.

Those of us who are married to - and living with - the fathers of our children have been feeling a bit beleaguered lately. In these days of single parents, step-parents, gay parents, surrogate parents, extended families and truncated families, those of us still clinging on in the old-style traditional version were beginning to feel a bit marginalised.

In fact, we're made to feel such a minority, that we're probably due a hand-out from the Lottery Commission any day now.

The final blow a few years ago was when Lynda Bellingham hung up her pinny and sprinkled her last Oxo cube. The nuclear family's goose seemed well and truly cooked.

But not for long.

Throughout history, different societies have tried different ways of bringing up children and trying to turn them into human beings. From kibbutzim to communes, they have had mixed success. So mixed, that people invariably go back to the two-parent version. Even parents who've been desperate to get out of one marriage, more often than not, get back into another one.

It might not be perfect, but it still has the best track record. So, like the advertisers, we keep going back to it.

All those step-families, however complicated, are a sign, really, that we still see a two-parent family as worth the effort, the best chance of success - whether you're raising children or selling gravy.

A TRIAL at York Crown Court collapsed because the jurors were watching the darts on TV instead of deliberating on their verdict.

If they all have to be deliberating all the time, then why on earth was a television in there in the first place?

ABOUT 25 years ago, I worked on a television programme about the state of the railways. Sir Peter Parker, then chairman of British Rail, made front page headlines on the day we showed the preview by saying that if cattle were transported in the same conditions as commuters, then the railways would have been prosecuted for cruelty.

And that was in the Good Old Days.

DAME Judi Dench is apparently brilliant in her latest film, Iris, the story of the late Iris Murdoch's decline into Alzheimer's.

Dame Judi, 67, is also to make another series of As Time Goes By, the gentle comedy in which she stars with Geoffrey Palmer.

It was only last year that her husband Michael Williams died of cancer. She could be forgiven if she retreated into retirement, grandmotherhood and reflecting on her past glories. But no - like Cilla Black - she clearly thinks that hard work is the best way of coping with grief.

It is a good old-fashioned remedy - and one of which we do well to be reminded.

THREE cheers for Suma Chakrabarti. Who? Well, he's the new Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Development, the youngest ever such post-holder in Whitehall and the first Asian. It's a department where civil servants regularly work 12 -14 hour days.

But why we should be cheering is that he has insisted, as a condition of his job, that he has time to have breakfast with his six-year-old daughter before he leaves for work and that he leaves the office at 5.30pm promptly, so that he can be home before she goes to bed. He also works at home every other Friday so that he can go to morning assembly at her school.

What is more, he is introducing new guidelines in his department promoting flexible hours, job shares, home working and career breaks. The man is a gem.

When working mothers try and do this, they are invariably accused of trying to have it all. Now that a man - and such a senior high-flying man - is doing it, it is, of course, known as promoting a healthy home/work balance.

Whatever the reason, it's a great step forward, to be welcomed by mothers, fathers and, most of all, by children.