"does this boy dance?"

Out for breakfast with parents and sister this morning we were perusing what's on the telly tonight. "Look", I said, "There's a choice of "Sister Act" or "Billy Elliot". My mum and I both agreed that the best parts of both those movies are the finales, especially the final scene of Billy Elliot when adult Billy does the great big leap on to the stage.

And then we remembered the first time my father watched Billy Elliot. It was about half way through, and he had a few little dozes (Dad not Billy. Billy had been dancing up a storm for some time). Dozing off is my father's normal mode of watching anything on television. So there had been silence for some time and then a voice deep from the lounge asked, "Does this boy dance?"

We still laugh a lot about that.

The other Dad classic was during a viewing of the Brooke Shields sitcom Suddenly Susan. About 20 minutes had passed without much comment ( or laughing as I recall) and he asked the room with great wonderment, "Is her name Susan?"

Oh, and there was also the time he was trying to change the TV channels with his mobile phone and getting quite irate that it wasn't working. We remind him of that fairly often.

Don't worry though, we're laughing at him, not with him.