On Father’s Day my millionaire son walked into my freezing apartment, saw the tinned soup on the table, and asked how I was managing on the eight thousand a month his wife sends me. I told him nobody sends me anything.

That is an extremely good sentence.

It is almost impossible to argue with. It makes the other person the problem for raising it. It ends a conversation inside about four seconds and leaves the person who said it looking selfless.

I have been using it since 1998. I have used it on my wife, on my son, on his wife, and on about four other people, and it has never failed once.

And it goes further still, and this is the one I have not said out loud to anybody including Emmett.

Three years of Sunday telephone calls.

Every single week, without fail, from a man running a company. He never missed one. He rang from four different countries and once from a car park at two in the morning his time.