COULD you stop doing that please... I said, could you stop doing that... Will you please stop... I said stop that, right now!" Shouting is apparently bad for your children. According to a Danish expert it's just another form of child abuse. Well, that's my sons' future lives in ruins. I rarely smacked my children but I shouted at them quite a lot. Still do, in fact.

Yes, I know, I know. According to the Danish professor, parents should "state their opinions in a normal voice".

Oh yeah - and how far is that going to get you? I tried, I really tried. Soft voice and sweet reason. And where did it get me? Nowhere. They'd still be belting seven bells out of each other or having water fights across the dinner table.

So I would shout. And usually it got the desired result. And then, once silence was restored, then there was a chance to start on the soft voice and sweet reason to explain why I shouted in the first place.

There was the glorious moment when I shouted "Oi! Stop That!" at one of my sons who was swinging on the curtains at the far end of the main hall in Hurworth Grange Community Centre - and an entire room full of toddlers froze, rooted to the spot in terror. Such power - it made other mothers look at me in awe.

A new Government campaign costing £50,000 will also be launched this week telling us how to cope with our toddlers. It includes advice about taking a deep breath and counting to ten. Yes, but by the time you've done that they'd have pulled the curtains off the pole and probably smashed the window too.

The Danish professor says that shouting at a child "induces anxiety and distress".

Exactly. That's why we do it. We want them to know that doing something stupid has mother shouting equals anxiety and distress equals think twice about doing it again. Think Pavlov and his dogs and you'll understand the message.

It's very simple. Even a child can understand it. Especially if you say it loud enough.

Some families are shouty families. My father shouted at me. I shouted back. Within a minute it was all forgotten. Very straightforward. So much better than those tight-lipped, grim-faced silences that some people can maintain for days or even weeks. That's much, much more cruel than shouting. And to this day I cannot cope with them.

Of course, you can't shout at your children all the time. If nothing else, it loses its impact and makes your throat sore. And where I do agree with the professor is on problems caused when parents shout at each other. Even robust well-adjusted children find that hard to take, finding it hard to differentiate between a minor disagreement and the first step to divorce. So grown ups, please have your rows in private.

The Danes have already banned the smacking of children. And as they have a law banning "psychological violence" to children, shouting could be next on the banned list.

In which case, I think I'd better stay at home.

A friend's son, a pupil at a leading public school, had brilliant GCSE and A Level results. "So he should, " said his father bitterly recalling the school fees, "Each one of those As has cost me around £10,000." Gulp.

If a child in a state school, especially a poorly-funded state school in a deprived area, could do as well, after learning in larger classes with fewer resources and possibly not so much help at home, then clearly the state school child has something special about him and deserves a chance at a top university.

That is only natural justice and common sense on the universities' part.

What won't work is trying to establish quotas for state school children. Like all quotas they are patronising, counter-productive and doomed to failure.

All that will happen is that wealthy parents will take their children out of the independent sector at the last minute, put them in state sixth forms and use the money they've saved on fees to fork out for private tuition.

And the average state school student will be no better off.

british scientists Sydney Brenner and Sir John Sulston, together with an American, Robert Horvitz, have just won the Nobel Prize for medicine. Their revolutionary work on body cells and worms will help understand cancer, Aids, strokes and heart attacks.

And though we will remember every second rate actor, third rate singer and objectionable star of yet another reality tv programme, what's the betting that the names of Brenner and Sulston will soon lapse back into obscurity. Such is our respect for science.

the Daily Telegraph yesterday filled much of its front page with a picture of Tory party chairman Teresa May's shoes.

Granted, they were pretty special - £225 mock leopard-skin stilettos.

But is the Telegraph trying to tell us that they are the most interesting part of the Conservative conference?

Published: 09/10/2002