FORMER Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, interviewed in The Northern Echo this week, talks about how he is enjoying his second chance at family life with his third wife and three young daughters.

His first child, Stephen, was only eight months old when Wyman joined the Stones and he has many regrets: "I missed all his childhood, it's a very important thing. But you've got a career to do."

The next day, 50-year-old Phil Collins was in the Press, photographed with his fourth child, by his 29-year-old third wife. He, too, confessed he was away touring for much of the time while his other children grew up. But this time he insists he is going to be a stay-at-home, hands-on father.

Both Wyman and Collins echo the sentiments of so many other older celebrity dads, such as Michael Douglas and Mick Jagger, who all say they are determined to make a better job of it second time around.

But it's not just rock stars and actors who are guilty of being so wrapped up in careers or obsessed by personal ambition that they neglect the most valuable thing in their lives, their families. Many ordinary men up and down the country make the same mistake, and live to regret it.

They may be lucky, like Wyman and Collins, and have the chance to start again. If their long hours and hard work have paid off, they may even have the luxury of large amounts of money and time to spend on their second families.

But while these dads enjoy a second stab at fatherhood, their grown-up kids, sadly, have only ever had one chance at childhood. And our childhoods, good or bad, have to last us a lifetime.

THE tabloids poked fun at Cleveland Borough Council for being mean and insensitive this week after officers sent a disabled man earplugs when he asked for double glazing to drown out noise near his home and help him sleep at night. Much as I sympathise with 48-year-old Bob Simmons, I think the council was right. I'm sure they weren't, as Bob claims, "taking the mickey". They just came up with a sensible solution to the problem. Unfortunately for Bob, it just didn't involve a valuable improvement to his home as well.

YET another case has been thrown out of court when a defendant's statement was declared inadmissible in court, this time because the police officer's scrawled handwriting was illegible. I have asked before why officers aren't trained in shorthand, like journalists. Since so much of their work involves gathering evidence to present to others, shouldn't they be expected to type as well? Most organisations, from local Womens' Institutes to parish councils and Cub Scout groups, manage to produce regular typed reports and news bulletins. Many schoolchildren now even type up their homework. It seems archaic that vital information is still presented to law courts in scrawled, handwritten notes. Charles Dickens complained about the slow, grinding wheels of British justice back in the 19th Century. How far have we come since then?

MORPETH man Richard Walker says he hates his estranged wife, and drives around in a car with the number plate H8 HER to prove it. People do bizarre things when scorned. Sadly, Richard's number plate says more about him, and how angry and bitter he feels, than it does about his ex-wife. But if it makes him feel better, the £285 pounds he spent on it must be worth it.

I WISH the star of Bridget Jones's Diary, Renee Zellweger, would stop talking about how much weight she had to put on to play the lead role. Now she is as thin as her diet sheet, she can laugh about how "fat" she was and poke fun at her huge, "Brazilian-sized" bum. But she only reached 9st 2lbs and wore size 12 clothes. In the real world, this is slim. In fact, most women would say 9st2lbs is v.v.g indeed.

Published: Friday, April 27, 2001