"Jim, I think you've been put on this earth to entertain us." Said by my late cousin and 'corner stone of the family' Jenny.

My dad is a highly competent man in most respects.. but every now and again he does some amazingly funny things. I have hand picked three such stories.

I work about 10 minutes walk away from my house so most days I go home for lunch. One such day quite a few years ago I wandered home for an hour, this usually results in a cup of coffee and 'egg on toast' for lunch. Our house is quite open plan downstairs so basically the front room and the dining room are separated by a large open archway, however the kitchen is separated with floral glass panels and a glass door both with wooden frames. You can't see through the glass especially well because of the textured pattern, so before I opened the kitchen door I didn't know that I would be greeted by a wall of smoke....

As I navigated my way through the smoke I found my dad leaning against the work top casually sipping a cup of coffee, I was like "Dad what the hell is all this smoke?!" to which the returned "Smoke?" this was before he had laser correction on his eyes so you'll have to forgive him. I tracked down the source of the smoke as coming from the oven, as I flipped down the oven door I was greeted by a blob of goo that plopped onto the open oven door.... It seemed that my dad was using his glasses to read the cooking instructions on a packet of Chicken Kievs. Having set the temp etc he had put his glasses on the oven door and had never retrieved them.... So for dinner was 2 Chicken Kievs and my dad's glasses complete with plastic case.

One Christmas my mum & dad had invited some of our less fortunate family that had decided that they couldn't afford a Christmas this year, they got them all presents including the 3 kids that they brought with them (my cousins) I don't think we've ever had a thank you but anyway.... because there were so many of us we had decided to clean out our side garage and set up a big dinner table in there for Christmas dinner complete with a fresh coffee making facilities. My dad is always the last to get his food, he always just seems to wait patiently for everyone to be sorted and desert was no different. Everybody was seated and enjoying 'Christmas Pudding With Cream' my dad was over at the coffee machine sorting out his own pudding and was soon seated with the rest of us ready to tuck in..

On taking his first mouthful of Christmas Pud his face screwed up followed by muffled screams of disgust... the Christmas Pudding was over by the coffee machine and what my dad thought was a lovely helping of Christmas Pudding with cream was infact very different.. of course you can't really get the cream wrong but what he had dished himself out to accompany it was infact old coffee grounds from a used filter.

The last one will be short and sweet because I have gone into to much detail on the others.... lets just say that a tube of 'Canesten' which is an oral anti-fungal cream is very similar in appearance to a tube of toothpaste.... I'll say no more!

PRD.