Featuring a man with a New York accent, dressed like a deli chef, making sandwiches in a homely kitchen. He is supposed to represent the modern mother, who with the help of Heinz Deli Mayo, can make even the moldiest cheese sandwich taste like a New York sub.

Not that this Stone Age vision of family life is what has gotten the paternal knickers in a twist. It’s the fact that, as the ads end, just as the haggard father rushes off to work, “mom” pulls him back for a quick peck on the lips before he goes out to chop some wood, or fight bears or do whatever it is we men are supposed to do to earn a living.

Parents told the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the ad was inappropriate and unsuitable for children. In these knife happy days, the fact that two men trading spit in a post watershed advertisement gets parents in a tizzy bothers me.

These are undoubtedly the same parents who considered the Newsround coverage of Mark Speight’s death “sick and appalling”. Despite the fact the show never made any mention of his suicide or his drug use, some parents saw fit to complain about the show reporting the story at all. Perhaps they would have been happier if Newsround had just announced that Speight had left cBeebies and gone to live on a farm like several of Blue Peter’s cats and dogs.

Why in this day and age are we still obsessed with protecting our children’s innocence? By wrapping them up in cotton wool all we do is breed another generation as ignorant, small minded and backward as the last. While I believe children are growing up too fast, shielding them from the realities of the day is not the answer.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. A BBC spokesman has said that hundreds of children have gotten in touch to express their sympathy at Speight’s passing and say how important and influential he was to them.

Perhaps if parents were to treat their children as the mature children Newsround see them to be the UK would finish a little higher than last in a UNICEF league of European countries for child well-being.

Having steered clear of driving for several years, Caomhan Keane decided to mark his maiden voyage. But balking at the spiralling cost of just one lesson, he decided to keep it in the family and learn another life lesson from his dad.

(Illustration by Adam Howarth)

“Lift your foot of the clutch…take it easy with the accelerator…easy…I said…EASY!”

Father and son relationships are supposedly fraught with Freudian friction. So there is no greater test of a father’s love than that of his son’s first driving lesson.

My father, Michael, lives for his Mazda 323. He’s named her, speaks to her and cleans her more often than he cleans himself. So it came as no shock when my first request for a driving lesson was met with a flat “no”.

“I don’t think people should teach people they know how to drive,” he said, polishing her hub. “I wouldn’t have the patience.”

A reminder of how he had the patience to teach my cousin to plough her parent’s car into a lamppost and a glance at how much a driving lesson would set him back (thirty quid a pop) had him singing a different tune.

Besides, I think he was secretly thrilled. While never the son he had expected (I can’t gut a fish and the only time I kicked a ball it ended up in the back of my own net) he’d found my lack of motoring skills particularly infuriating.

Most children growing up are scared of the monsters that lurked under their bed. I feared the very real monster that appeared in the driving seat every time my mother stepped behind the wheel of a car.

Of a natural nervous disposition, three horrendous car crashes left her, and me, shrieking with fear every time the car so much as approached a traffic light. Since this apple didn’t fall far from the tree, I swore I’d never put myself through such psychological torture again.

But there we were, on the back streets of my hometown, about to take my life in my own hands.

The point of a good first lesson, my father said, was to get the driver acquainted with the car. Initially the only thing I was getting acquainted with was whiplash.

It didn’t help that as we sped towards a stone wall, my teacher reverted to his native Irish, confusing an already baffled pupil.

Pulling the handbrake almost out of its resting place and his arm out of it’s socket, my fathers deep breaths were the only sound in a silence curdled with fear. When he finally spoke I felt like I was four all over again, steering the wheel from his lap.

He guided me through the changing of the gears, the releasing of the clutch and the hair-raising sensitivity of the accelerator. As we wound round the country roads he barked orders and occasionally grabbed the wheel, but as I learned to control the car, and he his temper, we relaxed.

Soon I was doing full loops round the village, pausing only to avoid sending my neighbour into his bush and for my father to natter like a foul mouthed knitting circle with anyone who crossed our path.

Country roads are perfect for a first time drivers: nearly always deserted and no traffic lights, roundabouts or motorways to wind up on, or around. But they provide their own unique challenges.

Mastering my first 90 degree turn, I found myself face to face with a herd of cattle. While later as I privately congratulated myself on my virgin voyage, my five year old cousin overtook me in his tractor.

There are definite advantages to having your father teach you to drive. Although your typical instructor wouldn’t belt you over the head if you forget to put the gears in neutral, you also miss the joy of watching his face ashen as you fulfill your need for speed.

But when you consider the price (none) and the quality time spent with the old man, the experience was a more fulfilling one than if I had gone to a driving school.

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So says Philip Larkin, and the Football Association (FA) agrees. The 2008/09 season will see children under the age of eight banned from playing in football leagues and cups.

This follows a series of complaints from whinging minors who want to quit the game after being hollered at from the sideline week in week out by over enthusiastic parents.

An FA spokesman said they want to create “an environment where children can learn and develop their skills without the pressure of having to get a result”.

While <em>Londoners</em> applauds the sudden attention to children’s needs (and wonders where the hell it was while they were being roasted and ridiculed) we’re not sure if the plan will work.

The primary aim of getting children into competitive sports is to teach them the game of life and knock the molly coddled crap they’ve been told since they were nippers out of them.

And won’t this ban backfire on the FA when the competitive spirit needed to produce decent future Wayne Rooney’s is absent in youngsters?

We shudder to think of the athletes this school of thought will produce.

Summertime is here and the living is indeed easy. Never have I so fulfilled my student potential by being a lazy, sozzled good for nothing. As the last of my loan drips out of my distressed and almost maxed out credit card, nothing is tickling my go-getter funny bone.

Day becomes night, Loose Women become Mad Men, yet Caomhan’s arse remains encumbered in its groove. It’s not like I have nothing to do. With debts to be cleared I should be banging down the door of potential employers. Yet the only thing I’ve been banging out is high scores on Guitar Hero.

In fairness, I have been nesting - feathering my home with empty pizza boxes, overturned bottles of beer and second hand smoke. But when the crumbled up Metro in the corner of the room is the only way I can tell what day it is, you have to question your methods. My feeling of self-worth isn’t helped by the daily phone calls from my concerned mother and her rousing rendition of Nat King Cole’s “The Party’s Over”.

But only a teacher could have considered the past year a party. A barrage of notes, quotes and scathing criticism is hurtling towards its inevitable end - the dole office. I wouldn’t trade it for all the tea in Tesco. But a party it wasn’t.

You should try telling that to my mother though, a woman who considers cancer a growing pain and thinks her only child is scared of an honest days work. But it’s not the work that scares me. It’s finding it.

Jobs are like women. If they treat me right I’ll hang on for the long haul. So my experience of “pulling” jobs is a little rusty. I like to wine, dine and do the time before laying my cards on the table. So when an editor wants to know what exactly my intentions are with his or her publication I start to shake, flake and saturate. It’s like they can tell that all I want is get into her payroll.

It’s only been a week since my last failure with an editor and, in hindsight, I may not have been best suited to Paperclips Monthly, but I’m hoping my forthcoming brace of interviews go better. Otherwise it’s back to: “Would you like fries with that?”.

Raveheads, shaveheads, dopeheads. Pretty much anyone who defines their life, and the way they live it, by putting a word before their head. Why is it that people who long to be different revel in their own concentricity?

I’m all for a person prescribing to a way of life if it makes them feel a part of something. It’s when they start turning their noses up at anything that doesn’t come togged in neon pink tights, a glow stick
and an “Atlantis to Interzone” tee-shirt that I get iffy.

With identical flicks of the mascara brush, hair off the scalp and hash-leaf hoodies they defeat the whole point in not conforming. While it is honorable to want to make an aesthetic difference, how different can you really be if you can be stuck in a social box by no more than a passing glance?

It’s a sad state of any persons affairs when the fact you are gay, jewish, black, etc, is all you have to say for yourself. It’s wonderful that you’re here and your queer but, quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing
this side of the record. Is there a b-side to your life?

Does your river run any deeper than the color of your skin, the name of your god or your choice in sexual partner? It’s a combination of all these things, and more, that make a person whole.

Hiding behind one just makes you dull, and makes other people apathetic to your cause.

As Sheila Edwards,61, wept at her husband’s sick bed this week she had to contend with the broadsheets, free sheets and general shits commenting on her actions as a mother and a wife.

John Edwards’,57, life, which was put in jeopardy after he was hit and run over by a drunk driver, could be saved by a blood transfusion. His sons want it. The doctors want it. The British public, if their red top voice is to be believed, want it. The only problem is, Sheila doesn’t.

Out of respect for her husbands beliefs Sheila has refused to allow the procedure. As a devout Jehovah’s Witness she says it would be like an assault on her husband and that he would not want to live knowing he has disobeyed god.

Enter, stage left, hysteria. Headlines about the woman who is “refusing” to save her husband, forcing her two sons to watch him die. Those who have turned their back on their faith are dragged out, like some kind of authority, to speak about the regret they feel at having made the same decision.

We are reminded of poor Emma Gough, 22, who died in childbirth after rejecting a transfusion when she had suffered internal bleeding following the birth of her twins.

We never pause to consider what it would do to this man were we to ignore his wishes. Yes we’ll have saved his life, but in his eyes we will have condemned his soul. Is it not odd that in spite of not having the strength of his convictions we feel like we can deride his relationship with God? Just because we can’t live by the doctrines of our given church does not give us the right to mock or act shocked at those who can.

Take the Scientologists, who believe that 75m years ago an evil galactic warlord rounded up 13.5 trillion beings and dumped them on volcanoes on Earth, then vaporised them with nuclear bombs. Then their radioactive souls, or thetans, attached themselves to humans and are at the root of our personal and global problems today.

Heck if I know what that’s all about. But as it’s not my faith I don’t have to . I just need to respect that someone else does. Because as a Catholic I’m supposed to believe some pretty funky stuff myself. And if you want to get down to it, did Henry the VIII, in founding the Church of England not just pick and mix whatever least affected his personal life?

It’s called faith for a reason. You either have it or you don’t. But if by getting up and leading my life by a certain set of principles helps me be a good person, then others should respect my faith and my beliefs rather than questioning them.

Living off daddy has never been so good, as those with cash to flash can upgrade their student digs to the quality of living they are used to back home. Whichever one they’ve come from.

From watching Trisha on their wide screen TV’s to kipping on the designer furniture, The London Studio Apartment blocks will cater to your every need. With a concierge to schedule your squash games and 24 hour security to keep the riff raff out, well-off students need only worry about getting to class before their heating deprived class mates.

The first phase of development opens in September in Shoreditch, with buildings to follow in Russell Square and Farringdon. Rent starts from £190 a week, including utilities.

Check out the properties here.

Yet you’ve got this niggling feeling you’ve forgotten something?

Well God darn it you’ve only just gone and forgotten to register at The Starting Over Show, Britain’s first ever divorce fair. It was Neil Sedaka who said that “breaking up is hard to do”, but now it’s easier than ever with this handy little expo aimed at helping people bounce back when they can’t be arsed waiting “till death do they part.”

The world’s first divorce fair, held last year in Vienna, attracted 500 people and 20 exhibitors. Even the Catholic Church had a stand dolling out advice to newly single parents.

Featuring lawyers, business experts, health professionals and independent financial advisers as well as - Londoners shits you not - pole dancers, it’s not surprising that this event has drawn criticism from all quarters, with Anastasia de Waal, head of family and education at Civitas, saying: “It sounds like a celebration of divorce and a bit gimmicky.”

However with more than 140,000 UK couples divorcing each year, get a head start in protecting your assets and going to the first ever-British divorce fair in Brighton on the 11th of October.

Picture, if you will, 19th century London. Death plays a hefty role in working class life. Parents deny their children a comfortable existence so they can bury them in style, inner city churchyards overflow, body snatching is rife and the shallow graves provided fresh meat for scavenging animals. Decaying matter increases the spread of disease as it enters the water supply, while rumours of cadavers being tossed into the newly built sewage system give Victorian londoners a genuine fear they might end up in the shit while searching for the afterlife. This is not a good time to believe in the resurrection.

To allay their fears, Parliament authorised the creation of the “magnificent seven”- a ring of cemeteries constructed on the outskirts of London. Built on the highest consecrated ground in the city, Highgate is the finest. Designed by architect Stephen Geary in 1839 it is more akin to a walk in the park than the factories of decaying flesh peddled by Geary’s inner city counterparts.

The real joy is the older West Cemetery, which is accessed only with a guided tour. A breeding ground for the stories that characterise a bygone era, we had hardly begun our ascent into the forest of the dead when we stumbled across the plot of James William Selbey. Images of horseshoes and whips on his tombstone mark his profession (coachman). A statue of Nero, the first lion born into captivity, marks the final resting place of George Wombwell, owner of London’s first travelling zoo while the world’s first heavy weight boxing champion Thomas Sayers is buried under a statue of his dog, Lion.

From Egyptian pyramids to Celtic crosses, weeping angels and hanging baskets, Highgate is awash with the final aesthetic statements of the deceased.

The Victorians were morbidly obsessed with death and Highgate was their Disneyland, with people coming from near and far to admire the decorative graves and magnificent mausoleums. None were more magnificent than the Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon.

In the centre of the cemetery an avenue of eight catacombs slice into the earth, leading up to a further 20 tombs, built around the roots of a cedar tree that pre-dates the cemetery by 150 years. The magnificent Egyptian architecture, which would have been brightly coloured in its day, is a fungal green now, but is no less pleasing to the eye.

Bram Stroker conceived his most frightening creation, Dracula, while sitting on a cracked tomb here. Highgate residents took this creation to heart and it led to the invention of the Highgate vampire. Reported sightings of a “grey figure” turned into a shit-fit between occult groups and escalated into a full on vampire hunt on Friday 13, 1970. To this day there has been no concrete evidence to suggest the figure actually exists but the legend was the basis for the Hammer classic Dracula AD.

As well as a source of creative inspiration, Highgate was also a place to settle old scores. Snubbed by society for his hard earned, rather than inherited, wealth, the Julius Beer mausoleum is a well aimed two fingers at the old money society that never took the banker and media mogul to their hearts.

Visiting the cemetery gives a fascinating glimpse into the lives, and more importantly the deaths, of Victorian londoners, whose fears and pretensions set the template for our own. It can also provide a pleasant day out.

Visiting Highgate cemetery

Entrance to the newer East Cemetery is £3, where you can pay your respects at Karl Marx’s final resting place.
The West Cemetery can only be accessed as part of a guided tour for £5.
Tours are hourly between 11-4pm on weekends and daily at 2pm during the week.

Closest tube: Archway.

But the true sign of my receding youth is my intolerance. While I haven’t started complaining about “the damn immigrants taking our jobs and taking our women” or pursed my lips at the thought of civil
marriage, I have found myself completely incapable of enjoying a night on the tiles without curdling my face at the state of my fellow man (and what appear to be his woman).

We’ll start with the clothes. Recently I’ve seen more gee than a gynaecologist. From discreet flash or full on gash, as the fairer of the species get leathered up on liqueur, their knickers get left behind in the scramble to the bottom. The rule of thumb seeming to be, the rougher the runt, the more apparent the c***.

Men are playing their own role in this clothing calamity. No sooner have they got into their Ben Sherman shirts then they’ve got straight back out of them, waving them above their heads, freeing their moobs for all to see.

Soon these topless miscreants are cementing their new found friendships with equally sweaty Betty’s by jumping up and down on the dance floor, spilling drinks and being obnoxious.

The dance floor is for dancing. It’s not a catwalk for Oompa Loompas parading the latest shade of orange around a mountain of handbags. It’s not a place for music aficionados to nod appreciatively while remaining rigid. And it’s certainly not a place to send your finger where many the finger has gone before.

No means no. It means you’re not getting in, you’re not on the list and you haven’t got a hope. Show some self respect and shut your mouth when you’re turned down, be it by babe or by bouncer. Shouting obscenities at either just improves their feeling of self worth and lowers yours.

Why is it that people under the age of 30 seem incapable of even sniffing a Stella Artois without losing the ability to keep their clothes on, legs shut and hands to themselves?

It’s not beyond the media to make a mountain out of a molehill but in this case it would appear that the many are ruining a night out for the few.