THEY say dads are just big kids. But some dads are bigger kids than others. Take my mate Phil...

When the snow came recently, me and Phil took the kids sledging and we let our wives come along for the walk.

The kids were all really keen, except our eldest, Christopher, who chose to stay at home.

This may have had something to do with the last time I took him sledging and he broke his ankle going over a ridge on my recommendation. To make matters worse, I refused to believe there was anything wrong with him until the x-rays showed otherwise.

Anyway, that's in the past and he'll just have to get over his mental scars. The other five - our remaining three and Phil's two - had a whale of a time, flying down the hill, until us dads started to get bored.

"Fancy a race?" I asked, knowing Phil wouldn't be able to resist.

"Aye, go on then," he replied. "First one past that tree stump at the bottom."

There was a collective sigh from our wives as they headed off towards the pub.

We were hoping they'd cheer us on but they have no sense of loyalty.

We got to the top of the hill, one of the kids shouted ONE, TWO, THREE, GO! and we were off.

There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that I would have won. I was about to go a good sledge-length in front when an arm came across and shoved me helplessly off course. I crashed into a patch of weeds and he went on to whizz past the tree stump, loudly declaring himself the champion.

Well, he's not the champion - he's a dirty rotten cheat - and I've been waiting for revenge ever since. It came at the weekend when Phil's son, Ben, and my son, Jack, asked us to take them over the field to fly their new remote-controlled planes.

We readily agreed, knowing it wouldn't be long before we'd get our chance to have a go.

"Hey, we could have a dog-fight," said Phil. (How childish.) We let the boys do their own thing for ten minutes and then we took over. The rules were simple. It came down to whoever could keep theirs up for the longest - a proper test of manhood.

Phil's plane got off to a promising start, but it suddenly wobbled at around 30 feet, before hurtling into a nose-dive. He battled with the controls but it was no good. The plane came down with a crunch after no more than ten seconds.

Mine, on the other hand, circled the field beautifully: dancing on the air currents, gliding high, and swooping low, but always in complete control, before coming in for a perfect landing after a flight lasting at least a minute.

"Fetch, Ben," barked Phil, sending his son off to retrieve the stricken plane.

"No wonder," he grumbled when the plane was brought back.

"It's lost its flamin' tail-fin - it won't fly properly without its tail-fin."

Excuses, excuses. I don't think I can be bothered playing with him anymore.

THE THINGS THEY SAY THE Dad At Large Roadshow made the fairly long haul to Elvington, near York, to help raise funds for the Flood Defences Committee, and former teacher Jean Ripley was overflowing with memories...

JEAN recalled a little boy in her class called Gordon Theobold who couldn't get his d's and b's the right way round so he went through life known as Gorbon Theodolb.

Gorbon was a good drawer and he'd drawn a lovely picture of Bethlehem with four men on camels coming over the horizon.

"Who are those men?" asked Jean.

"The Wise Men, Miss," replied Gorbon.

"And how many Wise Men are there?"

"Three, Miss."

"So who's the other one?"

"Well, Miss," Gorbon explained. "When you were reading us The Bible, you said that the Wise Men came over the hill with Haste."

ON another occasion, while Jean was on probation in the early days of her career, the children in her class had been asked to write Christmas stories in preparation for the schools' inspector paying a visit.

The inspector, looking puzzled, asked her if one particular little boy could read his story to him because he was having trouble understanding part of it.

The boy came over to the inspector and read the paragraph in question: "Joseph wrapped Mary in straw because he had no pennies."

There were sighs of relief all round because the boy had actually written: "Joseph raped Mary in straw because he had no penis."

AND, finally, Jean had a policy of selecting a word of the day for the children to learn. They had to look it up in the dictionary and then use it in a story to expand their vocabulary.

The special word one day was "frugal" and the children thumbed through their dictionaries to discover it meant "Good at saving."

One little girl went on to write in her story: "The princess looked out of the window of her castle and the prince was riding past and she shouted 'FRUGAL ME! FRUGAL ME!' - so he frugalled her and they both lived happily ever after."