GUILTY as charged.

Grandparents are in the dock again. Too inclined to treat children and overfeed them, says a new report from the University of Glasgow.

So? Amid much finger-wagging, the researchers say we’re building up health concerns for the children’s future.

What tosh.

Treat? Overfeed? Of course we do! Surely that’s part of the grandparents’ job description – to make up for all those years of forcing healthy green stuff into the mouths of the grand children’s parents, rationing biscuits, hiding the sweets and constantly nagging about manners, tidiness, homework and making them eat left-overs…

Grandparents deserve some fun too – especially as most of us are doing a chunk of childcare.

At least we make sure ours get lots of fresh air and exercise so by the time we hand them back they’re exhausted and ready for an early night. (Just like us …)

But I think I know the real reason the Glasgow researchers are getting so pompous and picky.

My mother, a harassed full-time working mother from a stern chapel background, was very strict as a parent. Treats were few, indulgences rare and from an early age I did lots of jobs around the house.

But as a granny she was totally transformed. She always arrived weighed down with home-made cakes, pies, puddings, bags of sweets. Whatever the boys asked for “Oh let them have it…” she’d say, letting them watch endless TV and go to bed when they liked and drink fizzy pop by the bucketful.

Needless to say, they loved it when she came to babysit. Loved her too, there was a real bond. She was always on their side.

That’s when I realised the problem. My mother had time and energy for her grandchildren in a way she rarely had for me, so of course she was going to make the most of it. Meanwhile, even as I loved watching her lavish love and attention on the boys, I have to admit a little bit of me was shouting inside “Not fair!”

That’s why those Glasgow researchers are so disapproving. I bet they’ve all got children who are being looked after by indulgent grannies – and they’re just plain jealous. They want sweets and treats too. That’s why they want to put a stop to the fun.

Anyway, I’m off to stock up on sticker books, biscuits and chocolate lollipops. Whatever those researchers think, a gran has to do what a gran has to do.

HAVE you seen the Waitrose Christmas ad filmed in the pub at Tan Hill? It’s all atmospheric as revellers are snowed in, but also very strange.

For a start, why is one of the men struggling through a blizzard with his coat undone? I think not.

Then there’s the Waitrose problem. Waitrose is thin on the ground up here. Not much between Hexham and Harrogate. The nearest one to Tan Hill is 36 miles away. A long way to go, even for a turkey. Waitrose doesn’t even deliver to Tan Hill either. Oops.

But other supermarkets do.

So the chances are that all that wonderful food the stranded travellers are enjoying so much in the Waitrose ad, in real life would probably have come from Tesco or Sainsburys…

Nice ad, though.

BECAUSE I’m so old I can remember when Advent calendars featured nothing more than a little picture of a star or a drum or a candle behind a tricky-to-open window, I still get ridiculously excited by the thought of a mouthful of chocolate every day until Christmas.

But in a sign of how Christmas has changed, there’s now a huge business in Advent calendars for grown ups – a month’s indulgence of make up, lipsticks or nail polishes, lotions and potions, that can easily cost more than £100.

Or you can have calendars featuring a daily tipple – prosecco, gin, whiskey, vodka, beer. So you can start on December 1, every day guzzling chocolate, knocking back the booze and painting your nails a different colour.

No wonder Christmas will seem like an anti-climax.

DELIA SMITH says she’s not writing any more cookery books because cookbooks are dead. If we want a recipe, she says, we can just get it off the internet.

Well yes.

But that’s not what cookery books are for. Cookery books – like TV cookery programmes – are for ogling, gazing at, dreaming, drooling over the pictures. Really they’re just food porn.

We’re buying more cookery books than ever and actually cooking less. That’s how much cookery books have to do with cooking.

TAMARA ECCLESTONE has apparently spent £50,000 turning the swimming pool of her £50m house into a ball pit and play pen for her three year old daughter Sophie.

Lucky her to have the money to do it. And it’s probably less hassle than going round the nearest Wacky Warehouse.

But if Sophie is like any normal child in about two days she’ll probably be asking for her swimming pool back again…