Written with self-excoriating candour and the driest humour, comes a book about being a dad from one of our best loved journalists.aFor me the hardest task of fatherhood was always the oppressive obligation to lead by example. My sons have been present on countless occasions when I have, as we say in my homeland, completely lost my shit. During these stressful moments I have often wished to turn to them as a judge might to a jury and say, aPlease strike the next few minutes from the recorda but many of those instances are chronicled in these pages. Its not because Im any less ashamed now; its because if I left them out there wouldnt be enough for a book.Perhaps this is my lifes true purpose: maybe Im here to teach my sons that self-esteem comes and goes it can get rolled right out of you at short notice but that you still can get by in life without any, as long as you dont want to be a contestant on The Apprentice. That, at least, is my experience. And for what its worth, my example.a
