I had to interview Sebastian Coe last week and, shamelessly exploiting the access, I took my ten-year-old daughter, a keen runner, along too. “He's one of the most famous people in the country,” I told her. “No one at school has heard of him,” Rachel replied. “All right, he used to be one of the most famous people in the country,” I admitted. “Everyone my age knows who he is.”

The words “my age”, as in “unimaginably ancient” didn't appear to impress her either. So I showed her a YouTube clip of Coe winning the 1500m in LA in 1984, just so she knew that I wasn't making it all up. It looked like a very, very long time ago.

Hostile reaction too from my contemporaries to Coe, mostly involving the words “that Tory” followed by another word of four letters beginning with S. It was a reminder of how ruthlessly the world used to be divided up into left and right. I must confess that in my youth I wasn't immune to that view myself. Besides his politics, something about his hair, the cut of his jib, his general wholesomeness was irksome to the would-be adolescent rebel of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Still, that's all changed now, thanks to increased maturity on my part, Lord Coe in person being a thoroughly likeable man and, most of all, the stark simplicities of parenthood: he couldn't have been nicer to my daughter, so he's fine by me. By the same logic, incidentally, thanks to their egregious policy of refusing admittance to those under 21, I wouldn't patronise an All Bar One if it was the last place on earth.

Child celebrity

The venue for the Coe interview was Docklands, a slice of American downtown in East London, prime All Bar One territory. “Why aren't there any other children?” Rachel asked. “Because you're supposed to be in school,” I said. Looking around, however, the total absence of children - any children, from babies to preschool to surly 16-year-old leavers - was abnormal. It was as if the Child Catcher had been doing the rounds with his camouflaged cage and his lollipop bribes and taken them all away to a doomy cavern with Dick van Dyke.

The result of this dearth of anyone under voting age was interesting: Rachel was treated as a celebrity. The people in Coe's office stopped to watch as she passed, the assistants in Pret A Manger made a big fuss of her. Proud father as I am, I'm making no great claims for my daughter's star quality, the same thing happens in our office, as I'm sure it does in yours, if someone brings a new-born baby in to show off. Necks crane, faces soften, the whole place brightens up.

And yet we starve ourselves of the company of children. Unless and until you have your own, it is entirely possible in certain jobs in certain places never to come into close contact with children at all, which is perhaps why so many people are now afraid of them. The solution, obviously, is to let children loose regularly in the workplace. I feel the same about animals. Bring your tortoise to work day? Can't hurt.

High anxiety

Lord Coe's office is on the 23rd floor of one of the Docklands towers. Its external walls are floor to ceiling glass, which either improves an already spectacular view, or frightens you half to death, depending on your reaction to extreme height. Coe and Rachel pressed themselves against the glass, I lurked about near the door clutching the back of a chair, legs trembling, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “The world divides into two sorts of people when they come in here,” Coe said. “Those who come straight over here like your daughter, and those who do what you're doing.”

Divided we stand

Left or right, working or middle, public or private, North or South, Coe or Ovett, kids or no kids, some distinctions die, others linger. Meanwhile, the conscientious columnist is always on the lookout for new ways of divvying people up. A useful one cropped up last summer when the Olympic flame came through London, guarded, you will recall, by a phalanx of creepy thugs in light blue tracksuits. Most right-thinking people were of course open-mouthed with fury and shock. A few observers, however, argued it was a reasonable security precaution, and these individuals I was happily able to jettison for ever.

This weekend I decided my new test of a decent person is how they react to the sight of a really fat person out jogging in the park. The correct reaction to seeing a really fat person out jogging in the park is, of course, wholehearted admiration. Anything less is suspect, and if the reaction involves a smirk or a sneer, then the smirker or the sneerer is heading for oblivion. The urge to divide always endures.

Bar none

Fascinating debate over lunch at work. A female colleague asks if the men have been to a “gentleman's” bar. Yes, it emerges, but only once, under protest, dragged by rough friends, and none of us had enjoyed it. Makes you wonder how these places stay open.

Times Recommends

• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• They’re still wriggling to avoid the flak on Iraq
• Rule the waves? Not any more we don’t