CHRIS Tarrant has taken over our house. He is, as you might guess, very difficult to live with.

It's all Smaller Son's fault of course. On the first day of half term he went into town and bought himself some new shoes, jeans, jumper and a computer game of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Now the trouble with the computer game is that it's terribly clever and has Chris Tarrant saying all those things that Chris Tarrant says, right from "Now take your time" and "Are you sure?" and "You don't have to answer, you can walk away" and all the time there's that music in the background playing havoc with your nerves.

Still, when we played a game, for the first time in my life, I was grateful to Cliff Richard. One of the questions was "Whose real name was Harry Webb?" "Elton John," said Smaller Son and crashed out with nothing while I soared on to greater glory and a virtual cheque for a quarter of a million.

I was, I admit, unbearably smug.

But that was nothing to what it was like when he played against his father. They are two of the most competitive people on this planet. When they played, you'd think the Arab Israeli war was going on in the study, what with all the noise and violence, the shouting and the slamming.

They also believe in playing for stakes. The first time was for all the washing up after Sunday lunch.

One of the gimmicks of the game is that you can Phone a Friend. A recorded voice thinks and dithers and finally plumps for an answer. Smaller Son got a very helpful Geordie called Rob who got his question right. Father got a very black woman called Sarah. She also sounded confident about which actress is married to Michael Williams. But got it wrong.

Father - who didn't have a clue about Michael Williams, Judi Dench or any of their family - stomped off to do all the washing up, alone, calling down curses on the hapless, hopeless Sarah. While Smaller Son lolled on an armchair and rubbed salt into the wounds by reminding him to put the cutlery away properly.

The next match they played was for who would get the coal in. Smaller Son lost that, well, how was he meant to know that Harold Wilson was elected prime minister in 1964?

Then, being them, there was a decider. "For bragging rights," said Smaller Son. Father, in a question about a Stephen Sondheim musical ("Who?) got Sarah again. Sarah was confident again. Father ignored her. Sarah was right.

"Oh dear," said Chris Tarrant. "I'm so sorry, you had £64,000 and you could have walked away..."

So a happy family Sunday ended with Father storming round the sitting room doing a Victor Meldrew impersonation "I don't believe it!" while muttering all sorts of highly politically incorrect things about poor Sarah. Smaller Son was crowing in delight and I was caught in the cross fire still trying to read the Sunday Times.

Next day, when they were both out, I had a go by myself. It's certainly a compulsive game. But when I played, I unplugged the speakers. There's only so much Chris Tarrant that any home can take...