YOU may recall that, for our recent silver wedding cruise, our children gave my wife and me a large silver envelope with strict instructions that it wasn’t to be opened until we got to Venice.

Inside the envelope were ten smaller envelopes, to be opened on each of the ten days of our holiday.

And those envelopes contained pieces of a home-made jigsaw which made up our wedding day picture.

As we sailed back into Venice on the tenth day of the cruise, there was only one piece of the jigsaw left to be slotted into the picture of the happy couple – my smiling, youthful face.

“Ahhh, isn’t that lovely?” I sighed to my wife, overcome as I was by the romance of the moment.

“Yes,” she replied. Then, after a dramatic pause, she added: “But I was still hoping it might be George Clooney.”

Lesser men may have been jealous and angry. But not me. During 25 years, I’ve come to accept my place in the pecking order. The four kids come first, then George, and then me. Come to think of it, Donny Osmond might come in between George and me.

Anyway, before our ship had even docked in Venice, I’d hatched a plan to earn a million brownie points on my wife’s birthday, a few months down the line.

If she wants to marry George Clooney, that’s what she’ll do, I thought to myself.

Back at work, I had our wedding picture scanned into my computer. I asked a graphic artist to cleverly “photo-shop” George Clooney’s face in place of mine. And then, I sent it off to an internet company – Photobox.

com – which makes all kinds of merchandise out of photographs: mugs, key-rings, pillow-cases... and jigsaws.

I thought about ordering a pillowcase but, as magnanimous as I am, I couldn’t countenance sharing a bed with George Clooney. I made do with a jigsaw.

It was delivered in days and packed away in good time for her birthday.

I couldn’t wait to see her face, but when the time came, and she unwrapped it, I have to say it was all a bit of an anti-climax.

“Oh, yes, very good,” was all she said, with a bit of a smile.

But then she looked again. And yelped: “Oh my God, it’s me – George Clooney,” she gushed. “How did you do that? Oh, my goodness, it’s brilliant.

I can’t believe it. Me and George!”

This reaction went on for some time. Indeed, she carried her present round with her for several days, telling friends how she’d married George Clooney, and that she had a jigsaw to prove it.

So there you are. I live to make the woman in my life happy and, for once, I think I’ve managed it.

And the real satisfaction in all of this is that for a few fleeting seconds, when she first looked at her present, she hadn’t noticed that I’d been replaced with George Clooney.

And that’s surely got to prove that there ain’t much differerence between me and gorgeous George...

The things they say

DAD-OF-THREE Neil Hunter, of Hartlepool, was telling me about a touching moment at bedtime. Son Jacob, six, threw his arms round his daddy and said: “I love you all the way to the asteroid belt 40,000 times.”

“That’s nice,” replied Neil.

“And I love Mummy just as much,”

added Jacob.

“That’s really nice,” said Neil.

“But I love Thomas a little bit more because he’s got a PlayStation Portable.”

  • From noon to 3pm on Saturday, I’ll be at Waterstone’s in the Cornmill centre, Darlington, signing copies of my second children’s book, Black-toothed Ruth Black. It’s about a little girl who won’t brush her teeth and is taken away to be taught a lesson by the evil tooth devils. It would be great to see you there.
  • You can follow me on Twitter @echopeterbarron