Say what you like about Cherie, she's refreshingly free of cynicism for someone who's been around politics for 30 years. In the extracts from her memoirs, which are being serialised in The Times all week, there is one moment that for me, particularly stood out. One episode in which her niceness, bordering on naivety, shone through. A moment when she displayed a trust in the behaviour of others that bordered on the saintly.

This moment of sublime faith in the goodness of others came when she explained how her anger at her husband for missing his turn to read to baby Leo subsided when he explained that he had had to talk to President Bush.

Absolutely. And presumably he missed bathtime, even on a Sunday night, because that was the only time that Kofi Annan was free for a chinwag. Both men are based on the Eastern Seaboard of the US, and are five hours behind us and would therefore, at 1.30pm their time, be in the middle of lunch when Tony was apparently helping them to safeguard the future of the free world.

Can Cherie not see what every other mother comes grimly to realise? Has she not, on her fourth child, and after years at the Bar cross-examining unreliable witnesses with dodgy alibis, seen through the lame excuses? Her husband, like so many husbands, is a primetime parent, a deadline daddy. Happy to be there for the football in the garden, delighted to be there when a swing needs to be pushed in the park, always up for the stretch between 9am and 5pm when it's all fun and laughter, jelly and ice-cream. But when tiredness sets in, in the hour before bedtime when tears come more easily, there's many a dad I know who finds that urgent work demands his absence, a colleague needs to be called, a report submitted, perhaps even a box of tissues has to be purchased before the late-night Tesco off the M3 closes.

That period between 6pm and 7pm, when the children refuse to take off their clothes, decline to get in the bath, object to having their hair washed, scream at the application of shampoo, shriek when it gets in their eyes, wail when you try to rinse it out, kick when you try to get them out of the tub, pummel you when you try to dry them, run away when you get out the pyjamas, wriggle when you put on the trousers, wee when the breeks are finally on, flail when you try to put on the PJ top, hyperventilate when it's over their head, flop in a faint when the nightclothes are eventually all on, demand the Richard Scarry, discard the Richard Scarry, grab the book you've been reading for the past three years, which they've now outgrown, and which everyone else in their class now regards as babyish, insist that you read it, go into a sustained dry retch when you refuse and then, when you relent, stare into the middle distance and yell for milk is, I think, the worst part of parenting. The Gehenna of Dad-dom. When it's time for baths that involve so much wrestling that you'd exhaust the gym instructor of a Turkish prison, and then the 777th reading of The Gruffalo, even a discussion of the most intractable conflicts known to man can seem like gentle relief.

That Cherie didn't see that Tony would rather spend the time talking to anyone - John Prescott even - than attend to the pre-bed ritual is proof of her angelic nature. Tony, being one of the most skilful politicians of his age, would, I presume, descend on the children's bedroom just as drowsiness was at last taking them off to the Land of Nod, when he could bestow on them a practised electioneer's kiss and a dad's indulgent hug before then heading off to watch the Cliff Richard DVDs.

I, however, as a greenhorn MP and all-round political klutz, cannot so easily evade my responsibilities. It's not a clincher when you tell your wife that you can't do the bath tonight because you've got to take a call from Radio Rockall, on whose drive-time phone-in you're guesting. Even when you point out that they can't get anyone else to discuss the impact on puffins of the reform of the EU's fisheries policy at such short notice, you're not on winning ground.

There is, of course, a certain satisfaction in getting the children clean, preparing them for bed and introducing them to a world of adventure through the magic of the written word. But that's not what I normally find myself doing between six and - let's be honest - half-past eight of an evening. I am instead coating them in an emulsion of pre-existing dirt and imperfectly rinsed shampoo, driving them to a pitch of emotional hyperactivity through an inability to maintain consistent disciplinary signals for more than 30 seconds at a time, and then boring them rigid with my insistence on reading the meandering nonsense that is Loud Emily because I like the retro pictures.

What I need, in the absence of a Blair-like ability to conjure up chats with world leaders at a crucial time, is proper training in how to prepare my children for a calm and enjoyable journey to Bedfordshire. If you have tips, please do write in. And if you feel I'm missing the point, and there are joys to the bathtime hour I'm missing, or even rituals in the child-rearing day that are even more testing for daddies everywhere, do let me know. And if Cherie's book explains how she managed to achieve so much, taking silk, raising four children, inspiring charitable work and acting as a role model while never having her husband do a single bathtime then it will, I know, be worth every penny the publishers paid.

PS: I did, of course, write this column while my wife was bathing the children. She just wanted you all to know that.

The greatest football manager of our time
Man U's Premier League success allows me to return to a favourite theme: the consistent underestimation of Sir Alex Ferguson. He has proven himself, despite being talked down, written off and patronised, as the greatest football manager of our time. From his success at Aberdeen (never since emulated, it grieves me to say) to his long, long run at Man U, he has led very different teams, in very different circumstances, to consistent success. The contrast between the level of success enjoyed by Man U under Fergie and the parlous performance of the England side over the same period couldn't be greater. Given that Fergie has either managed, or engineered the defeat of, almost every player eligible for the England team, no one is in better position to lead them. No manager would command greater respect, know better how to get the best out of England's players or appreciate how to use the strengths honed in the Premier League. But he has never been seriously approached, by which I mean offered the money, status and freedom commensurate with his skills.

I read that England's sights are set only on reaching the semi-final of their next tournament. Sir Alex would never settle for anything other than winning; that is why he deserves the job. In declining to make victory its goal, the FA has shown why it still doesn't deserve him.

Testing the water
Thanks to all of you who wrote to say that 40 is not too late to start surfing; I've been inundated with offers of places to start. I can only presume that most of you have never seen me move on dry land, let alone in the water. But I am increasingly tempted to take the plunge. I have only one question: given that my sense of balance is so bad that I had stabilisers on my bike until I was 14, and have never voyaged across any stretch of water larger than the Serpentine in anything other than a horizontal position, are there exercises I can do to see if I might be able to manage surfing, before I risk the drowning bit?

Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath.

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