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T
HIS
was my plan for Tuesday morning: I was going to jump out of bed, run down to the Shaw Theatre on Euston Road, burst
into the annual National Childminding Association conference, shout something from the floor, and, once I had got a reaction from the podium, run home again and write this.

Well, not this. This is what I shall have to write instead, because the plan didn’t work. The Shaw Theatre was shut. The conference was over. It had lasted only a day. I don’t know
why the NCMA Conference is so brief, it may be because, if all the childminders are at it, there isn’t anybody at home to look after their kids, but whatever the reason, all I have done this
morning is jump out of bed, run down to Euston Road, bang on a big door, and run home again. I have not been able to take advantage of the delightful coincidence of their holding it at the Shaw
Theatre; because what I had been planning to shout was: ‘Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of children.’ I wanted
to shout this not just because Shaw said it when he was 90, after he had had a fair amount of time to think about it, but also because, at the distant beginning of that time, he had had a really
rotten childhood, thanks to the fact that his mother was a singer with the range of a frog who selfishly pursued her unnecessary career rather than bring little George Bernard up; which – and
this is the point – explains neither why he became an estate agent at 14, nor a great writer afterwards.

I would have shouted it in order to see what Dr Penelope Leach, president of the NCMA, made of it. She is a woman whose dedicated work I have not only long admired, but often relied upon: Mrs
Coren and I bought her seminal
Your Baby and Child
when it came out in 1977, and frequently threw it at our two when they wouldn’t shut up. Now she has come up with yet another set
of mouldbreaking assertions; but, despite my continuing respect, at the core of her meticulously researched and convincingly argued case there is a major flaw which I would have taken a shy at this
morning, if she and her acolytes hadn’t all gone home.

The flaw was succinctly adumbrated by the headline in Monday’s
Daily Mail
encapsulating as only the
Daily Mail
can Dr Leach’s pre-released text for the conference:
‘Children Do Best If Mother Is There.’
Mail
readers would have relished that: deployed around Warminster-on-Sea, straining through their binoculars for the first ripples of
anything attempting to wade ashore to claim council houses and new hips, they must, the moment the paper was delivered to their hides, have buckled the welkin with their cheers.

Not me: I am not bothered by the socio-political resonances of Dr Leach’s latest conclusion that maternal care is better than nannying, I am bothered only by the notion of better. What is
a better child? Better for what? Mrs Shaw was a lousy mother. Mrs Hitler was exemplary. Put another way, were you to wish to found a great city which would develop not only into a mighty empire but
also an illustrious culture blessed with immortal literature, an exemplary legal system, extraordinary art and architecture, and 307 different sorts of pasta, your best bet would be to be brought
up by a wolf.

I cannot, of course, speak for myself, except to say that during my formative years I was never allowed to, my mother being a lovably strict woman for whose husband World War Two came not a
moment too soon (though family rumours that he was the only member of the RAF to attempt to tunnel into Colditz are fairly wide of the mark). She did, mind, exercise her will when my own wife was
pregnant: our cat used to sit on my Mrs Coren’s lap, treadling her maternity smock, until my father’s Mrs Coren hit it with a dish-cloth on the grounds that if it did not get off, our
child would be born with feline lineaments. That he was not is a source of some gratitude to him, since a food critic walking into a flash restaurant with a ginger tail hanging out of his trousers
would be less than welcome, especially if he asked for
mouse au vin
.

Oh, you know what I’m saying, Dr Leach: though you have spent your life researching comparative routes to the optimum nurturing of happiness, you and I both know that the truly scientific
conclusion is that it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. And anyway, as Shaw further remarked, in
Man and Superman
: ‘A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear
it.’

‘Y
OU
’
RE
up early,’ I said.

‘When you are on a secret training run,’ he said, ‘you do not want people about. I have been attempting to smash the Heathrow/Hyde Park record.’

‘How did it go?’ I enquired.

‘I got it up to 3 hours 27 minutes,’ said the cabbie, through the slot. ‘In sporting jargon, £171.40. But these are early days; I could well knock on ten more by going
through Hounslow twice and sticking to alleys. I see the main threat as coming from the Germans, they are competitive sods, I’ve had ’em sat there with a map and compass before now.
Where to, guv?’

‘Wapping,’ I said.

‘There’s roadworks at King’s Cross,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to go via Norwich.’

‘Drop me off at the nearest Tube,’ I said.

‘No doubt,’ said the Editor, ‘you are expecting the team to concentrate on our usual two main events, the three-day SEX SCANDAL ROCKS OLYMPIC VILLAGE and the
five-day DRUGS SCANDAL ROCKS OLYMPIC VILLAGE?’

‘More yet, sir,’ I said. ‘I should also like to put myself down for the synchronised BRIBES SCANDAL ROCKS OLYMPIC VILLAGE. I feel ready.’

The Editor offered me his warmest smile. Frost formed on my stubble.

‘The game has changed, old timer,’ he said. ‘For the 2012 Olympics, all our efforts will be bent towards achieving supremacy in one event only: the MILLIONAIRE DISCUS. This
great newspaper is going to make someone the first discus millionaire. Every day, a little cardboard disc will be tucked inside the Business Section. Each – here is the brilliant part –
will have a different number on it.’

‘Fabulous,’ I murmured. ‘What can I do?’

‘You can go and find a young British hopeful to interview,’ he said.

‘This news has come as a wonderful boost for Sharon!’ barked her mother into my tape recorder. ‘Only 12, but already showing every sign of the form that will
take her right to the top, thanks to one of that unsung band of British mums dedicated to seeing that Rumania does not have things all its own way in 2012! Yes, the lights snap on every day at 4
a.m. behind the neat curtains of the spotless Chigwell semi with its own off-street parking and wealth of shrubs, as Doreen, 38 but with the figure of a woman half her age, ensures that Sharon goes
through those rigorous exercises which will develop her lithe young body into a finely-tuned instrument in time for that fateful day seven years from now when it will be Olympic Week In the
Sun
. Sharon will be competing with the world’s top stunnas for the coveted Page Three spot, leading to fab modelling contracts, and her own chat show.’

‘Plus a champagne-style penthouse for the best Mum in the world,’ said Sharon, to the carpet.

There was a pub opposite. I ordered a pint.

‘You want to get sunnink hot inside you,’ said the landlord, ‘day like this. Do you a nice Athlete’s Lunch: jumbo piece of Olympic Cheddar, two onions as supplied to the
British relay team, slice of the only wholemeal wossname Kelly Holmes would touch, and a dollop of fencer’s mustard, twelve quid.’

‘Seems a bit steep.’

‘It’ll be fifteen tomorrow. You would not credit the anticipated demand. We are less than 12 miles from Wembley Stadium. I am going for gold.’

‘But the Games are five years off,’ I said.

‘I might be dead in five years,’ said the landlord.

‘This could be his last Olympic chance,’ cried a potman from the cellar.

Outside the pub, I found my way barred by a policemen’s arm. A mob was running by, sweating and spitting.

‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘A charity jog? A terror attack? An Ikea sale?’

‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Could be hotdog sellers, travel agents, guides, ticket touts, publishers, pickpockets, you name it. They could be rushing to audition for Celebrity Love
Pole Vault, Strictly Come Shotputting, narmean?’

‘Dear God!’ I cried. ‘Is this going to go on for another five years?’

‘There’s a sporting chance,’ he said.

Y
OU
cannot see me this morning, but I am hugging myself. That is because, on another morning in the not too distant future,
you may very well be able to see me hugging myself. My television career is about to take off. Quite literally, thanks to Merseyside Police.

For this is the morning on which they launch their CCTV drone. I do not know how it came to be called a drone, but your Johnny Etymology is a funny cove, so leave us not waste time wondering how
a bee with its feet up suddenly transmogrifies into the busiest bee of all, and instead rejoice that the skies above us will soon be buzzing with hundreds of titchy airborne cameras, scoping our
every move. Because you may be sure that, when it comes to surveillance, it will be today Merseyside, tomorrow the world.

So I hug myself because, hitherto, my CCTV career has been embarrassingly sluggish. It has had its moments, but they were rare: true, I am something of a star in my local Waitrose, where
security staff say it is always a joy watching me grin up at them as I reach for catsmeat or wonder animatedly whether I will get my trolley through a particularly tricky gap in Special Offer
pyramids, scratching my head, rolling my eyes, giving it large, they say I am one of a kind; and the man in my off-licence, I know, never tires of me juggling lagers, even funnier, he says, now
he’s had colour put in, most customers just stand quietly in the queue, Mr Coren, you are a real tonic.

But, even when you take into account my handful of impromptu comedy classics –
Overfilling Tank And Petrol Running All Down Trousers
, say, or
Forgetting Pin Number At Lloyds
Cashpoint And Man Behind Shouting
, or even my more rehearsed performances, such as
Pulling Margaret Beckett Face In Betting Shop
– these are all minor gems, and have never drawn
audiences larger than three. Four, if you count the myopic punter staring at the wrong screen for the 3.15 from Sandown Park.

I have never, you see, been lucky enough to be in a corner grocery when shotguns were deployed in time for nationwide exposure on
News at Ten
, I have never been visibly passed on Euston
Station by a mobiling hoodie subsequently arrested for phoning Bin Laden, I have never been anywhere near when a congestion-charge camera spotted, say, Pete Doherty rooting about in a litter-bin,
or an Ivy washroom lens caught Joan Collins tackling a zit. I wasn’t around. In CCTV business, timing is everything.

Or, rather, has been up until now. From today, thanks to the Old Mersey Bill, and from tomorrow, thanks to the world we now live in, CCTV will be everywhere. All I have to do to go big-time is
get out and about a lot. Eventually, something major is bound to happen where I am, and when it does, you will see me that very night, just behind Natasha Kaplinsky’s ear. I shall be the one
doing handstands.

A
S
I write, I have absolutely no idea what time it is. This is something of an inconvenience when you are working against a
deadline. Suddenly, the deadline is working against you. You will say, how strange, he is a man of the world, he has knocked about a bit, why hasn’t he got a watch? I will answer, good
question, there are no flies on you, but the truth is I do have a watch. It is on the other side of the room, under a cushion on the chesterfield I use to stare at the ceiling when I am unable to
think of anything with which to meet my deadline. It is not only under a cushion, it is also under the sweater I have put over the cushion. The only way I can find out the time is to get up from
the screen at which I am tapping this, cross the room, take the sweater off the cushion and the cushion off the watch, look at it, and then put it back under all the stuff I took off it to check
what time it was. This takes a lot of time you cannot spare when you have a deadline.

Especially because, willy-nilly, a neurotic factor has now introduced itself into the equation: I have become unable to not think about the time, and am thus in a constant battle with the
temptation to get up and run across the room to do the thing with the watch and the cushion and the sweater. Each time I do this, of course, the time employed in doing it chips off a bit more of
the time between me and the deadline. I rather think it was Richard II who put his finger bang on my button when he muttered: ‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me,’ but I cannot
check up on his exact words because that would mean getting up and running over to the bookshelf, and if I did that I should be incapable, as I passed the chesterfield on the way back, of not
lifting up the sweater and the cushion and looking at the watch again.

You, who if I do not stop all this will soon be as nuts as I am, are entitled to an answer to your second question, which is ‘Why is his watch not on his wrist?’ Join me at Nice
airport, yesterday at 6.11 p.m. GMT, a trip you may easily make, whatever Einstein said – you wouldn’t believe how little he thought about time, compared with me – and you will
see me pulling the bezel out of the side of my watch, because the hands stand at 7.11 French time, and I am soon to board a plane back to England, and I not only like to be ready – I have
this thing about time, you know – I also like to have something to do at airports when I am waiting to get on a plane which is an hour late and I have finished my book. So I pulled out the
bezel to turn back the hands, but what happened was, the bezel kept on coming until it was totally out. ‘My bezel has come out,’ I told Mrs Coren, in some distress, but she had not
finished her book, so could not have been expected to look up and be the helpmeet for me, despite what God promised.