Bring back Tufty to give young some phone sense

Being a dad is surprisingly easy. There’s nothing complicated about it at all.

Mums do most of the donkey work, what with pushing something the size of a rugby ball out and being the ‘go-to guy’ whenever there’s a major problem about feelings.

Once kids reach a certain age (as in teenage) the dad’s one and only job is to be there. Everything else pretty much takes care of itself.

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Ninety per cent of successful parenting is just turning up. That’s it. Most of the time dads don’t even have to do anything. Just pick up, drop off, feed and pay for the fibre optic broadband. We’re basically Uber and Just Eat with a free top-class internet connection.

In fact, as long as the broadband is up and running the other three pale into insignificance. When that drops then brace yourself for the screams.

Without wishing to sound like every other parenting column in the world, I do wish kids would put down their mobile phones occasionally. For their own safety and Lancaster drivers’ shattered nerves as much as anything else.

On the school run I’ve had that much practice at pipping my car horn at dopey teenagers who walk out into the middle of the road while gawping at their iPhones that I can play God Save The Queen to concert hall standard on it.

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The situation is becoming so dangerous I think it’s time for the Tufty Club to make a return, rebooted for 2015 to include road safety advice from a stop-motion animated squirrel about not staring at your phone while you’re dawdling across the A6 during rush hour.

What with the success of Operation Yewtree, Tufty is one of the few children’s entertainers from the 1970s who isn’t currently banged up for child abuse.

So, Tufty, the comeback gig is on!

But this really is a thing. Kids today (there, I said it) walk around with their eyes shut.

Because they don’t listen, thanks in part to their noise-cancelling Bose earphones, they’re operating with just three senses – four if you count their constant sense of entitlement.

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