Super Dooper

One of the universal truths of life is that Super Nanny is neither Super nor a Nanny. She may have been at one time but now she is a TV presenter who wears unsuitable attire for the job in hand. Have you ever worn what can only be described as daytime bondage attire complete with spiky dominatrix heels to look after the children for a day? No I thought not, even if you wanted to it may be a little difficult to make friends at playgroup if you look like you're about to whip anyone who comes within whipping distance. Regular readers of this blog may think that for some reason I dislike Super Nanny, I do, but not the actual person, I have absolutely nothing against Jo Frost (aka Super Nanny), she's done really well for herself. She was doing a perfectly ordinary job and simply by adding the prefix Super to her job title, she automatically made herself a force to be reckoned with in the field of child care. In fact if that's all you have to do to release yourself from the tedium of ordinariness and launch yourself a high profile television career both sides of the Atlantic with regular appearances in your very own magazine then I'm amazed more people aren't doing it. Forget blogging, just upgrade your job title to a non existent one that makes very clear that you are the very best. There are loads to choose from; we could have Super Accountant, the most Super of accountants who marches into your house, shouts at you for all the unpaid bills and unanswered correspondence regarding said bills, sorts them out for you and leaves for a week. You then spend a week enjoying the paper-pile-free existence that had heretofore been only a dream while letting the post build up until Super Accountant turns up again to see how you've been doing to sort out that week's bills for you. A year later for the update show, you could have a whole room filled with unopened bills for Super Accountant to shout at you about before sorting them again and leaving you with stern words about how to look after your accounts. A small price to pay for not having to bother with your bills, you never did anyway.

Consider if you will also, Super Plumber, who arrives with a long declogging thing and inspects all of your pipes. The cameras focus in on just how grimy and disgusting you are, highlighting the Sunday roast fat in the dishwasher and hair in the drainpipes, Super Plumber performs this most retching of tasks for you and cameras cut to clean shiny pipes that will take years for you to clog again. Super Plumber even gets a tie-in magazine Plumbing New Depths where photos of you and your pipes are displayed with canny headlines about your lives being changed by Super Plumber: 'My marriage flows better now my pipes do' or 'Drainage never seemed important before, now Husband and I discuss it every night, it keeps things interesting.'

So no, I take no offence at Jo Frost I just dislike the way the programme makes you feel as if any tiny misdemeanor on your child's part is all your fault. It is of course, I accept that deep in my sub conscious, but I keep it in the Survival Cortex area of my brain with such truths as food eaten standing up counts where it lays quietly, with only occasional firing up of the denial synapse to remind me of my self delusion. What the TV show doesn't get that its message of you're rubbish, don't even try to bring up your children alone or you'll mess them up. In fact you probably already have, is no new thing. We know that! Why else do we go around guilt ridden to every class/extended education programme/experiential workshop, dragging the children whose only wish is to play with the playdoh? Because we know we're going to mess it up somehow and we'd like someone else to blame in the future: Sorry madam, but your son's been arrested for graffiti.

Really? Oh dear officer, I blame the existential artist he studied with when he was four, used graffiti as a way of expressing community concern. Whatever happens you have somebody other than yourself to blame.

I did give it a go once though. I tried all the Super Nanny tricks to bring a semblance of discipline to the Millennium Housewife brood, oh yes. But it didn't work, I just couldn't get the tone right for explaining that things just weren't acceptable. In one last, huge attempt at getting it right, I donned the Super Nanny attire in order to give me the necessary stern look and started bossing the children about once again. To be fair it did have more of an effect, I quite enjoyed it really. Until Husband came home and looked at me delighted, thinking that at last I had decided to agree to a little light bondage.