OUR fourth-born - a surprise, not a mistake - has always had a fascination for hair and an associated sadistic streak.

Ever since he was a baby, he's loved to grab a handful of my chest hairs and give them a damned good tug. "Dad, it's boring. Can I pull the hair on your chest for a bit?" he's apt to say if what's on telly isn't to his taste.

Not many people know that I have one rogue chest hair which is pure white and Max, aged five, loves to single it out for painful extraction and wait for it to return a few weeks later. "Don't worry, Dad, it won't hurt," he promises.

His uncle's moustache has also proved irresistible over the years and many is the time we've both desperately fought back the tears while trying to prove our manliness in the face of excruciating pain.

Mum doesn't know what it's like, of course, on the grounds that she has neither a moustache nor a hairy chest. She does, however, like to have her legs waxed regularly and insists that's worse. "It's sheer agony," she always insists afterwards. Good job she hasn't had to go through a vasectomy, that's all I can say.

Max, as the baby of the family, has got used to going with her on leg-waxing trips and, as a born sadist, it's become one of his favourite outings. He loves to watch the beautician whipping off the wax and Mum shouting out in so-called agony.

Shortly before our holidays, Mum decided she'd better have a waxing. "Are you coming with me to Doctor Heather's?" she asked the little 'un. (The waxer is known as Doctor Heather because his Mum's histrionics have left him convinced that leg-hair removal is a major surgical procedure one step down from open heart surgery.)

"Hold on, Mum - you don't need to go," he shouted before running off into another room. He returned with a roll of sticky address labels in his hand and announced: "I'm going to do it for you to save money."

He proceeded to make her lie on the settee while he stuck address labels to her legs and peeled them off with an evil glint in his eye. Naturally, she was encouraged to scream each time a label came off. Once it was all over, she had to sneak off to Doctor Heather's without telling him to avoid belittling his waxing abilities.

"What have you done today, Max?" I asked when I got home.

"Waxed Mum's legs for her," he replied.

"What?"

"Leg-waxing. I'll do you if you like." Before I could argue, he'd led me to the settee and was struggling to push up my trouser legs. "It's no good, you'll have to take them off - but you can keep your pants on," he said.

So there I was, lying on a settee in my underpants, with sticky address labels all over my legs. "Got one!" he shouted, eagerly showing me a newly-removed address label with a single hair stuck to it. This was clearly going to be a long process. I lay back, thought of England, and prayed we wouldn't have visitors.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

ADAM, aged two-and-a-half, was on a family holiday in Menorca and was playing in the pool with a rubber ring which happened to have a Scooby Doo head. Adam wasn't familiar with Scooby Doo so he called it Bumpy Dog after the character in Noddy. The ring needed blowing up so Granddad - known to Adam as Pompa - got the job. Suddenly, Adam shouted across to his Grandma: "Look, Granny, Pompa's kissing Bumpy Dog's bottom."

l Pompa and Granny are John and Cam Billany, of Redworth, near Darlington, who said hello at the Rotary Ins and Outs dinner at Hardwick Hall Hotel, Sedgefield, a few weeks back.

ONE of the organisers of the Ins and Outs dinner was retired Methodist minister Jim Platten, now of Saltburn, who recalled a wedding at Seaham some years ago. A little page boy, wearing a kilt, stood at the altar alongside a little flower girl. Under strict instructions to behave, the boy managed to get through the first hymn without mishap but then started to fidget. He turned to the flower girl and said: "I've got knickers on - have you?" Seconds later, and not having had a reply from the flower girl, he turned round and shouted to the bride's mother: "I've got knickers on - have you?" "The bride's mother just went beetroot," said Jim. "It was quite funny really."