In textbook journalistic fashion, I have the following from three independent sources. That does not, however, mean that it is true. What I've heard is this: the only reason airlines get you to adopt the brace position for an emergency landing is so you don't get decapitated, making it much easier to identify your corpse afterwards.

Load of heads? Load of headless bodies? Devil's own job matching them up. If you duck, you're still going to die, but the post-mortem admin for the authorities is that much easier.

I first heard this gem in America about six months ago. Can't remember who from: a man in a bar probably. Then in the spring, back in Britain, I heard it again, quite possibly from another man in another bar. Then on Saturday I was in the pub with my wife's cousin's son, and Steve told me the same thing.

It's nonsense, isn't it? Classic urban myth. And even if it is true, it's still worth doing as you're told and sticking your head down between your knees. Because whether you're getting decapitated to save the accident investigators some hassle or whether you're getting decapitated just because that's the way things go in a plane crash if you don't crouch down, either way I think we can agree getting decapitated still sucks.

Could they, by chance, be...

After Hugo Rifkind's Mervyn King/Dame Edna spot, I, too, find myself in the mood for a lookalike. It may have been pointed out before, and if so, it bears repetition, if not, I claim the credit: the young Gordon Brown (and the older Gordon Brown, come to that) is surely related to Tattoo out of Fantasy Island.

Dressing down

We're starting to look at secondary schools for our daughter. In many parts of the country, this is a straightforward process. In the big cities, particularly London, it's anything but. Indeed, it's something in the nature of an audition.

I wouldn't normally be let loose alone on something as important as a prospective school's open day, but my wife had already seen the school and had somewhere else she needed to be, so I went by myself. Twenty minutes before setting off, my daughter intercepted me on the landing and told me she needed to perform an inspection.

It did not go well. In the strongest possible terms Rachel recommended that I change my shirt, my trousers, my shoes and, for some reason, my sunglasses. And shave. And under no circumstances scratch my bottom or pick my nose, or indeed vice versa, while on the school grounds.

When my wife makes these sort of pleas before we go somewhere, I go all Churchillian and start bellowing that I shall fight her on the chinos, I shall fight her on the smart-casual jackets, I shall fight her on the not-very-impressive designer stubble, I shall never surrender, etc. With my daughter, strangely, I found myself doing exactly as I was told.

“How did you manage that?” my wife asked her when she saw the transformation.

Listening to the headmaster's spiel an hour later, I carefully placed my left hand on my left buttock and my right index finger up my right nostril, just to prove I can't be pushed around by a ten-year-old.

I made sure no one was looking first.

You read it here first

Strolling through our local park at the weekend, my children and I chanced across a minor semantic dispute between a park-keeper, or park ranger as they are now known, and a large group of youngsters enjoying a barbecue. “Open fires aren't allowed,” said the parkie. “It's not an open fire,” said the barbecuers. “Yes it is.” “No it isn't.” We walked on.

“I don't understand why the park ranger didn't just smash their barbecue to pieces if he didn't want them to have it,” said my son.

Park rangers, I explained, are there to look after the park, pick up litter, water the plants, drive along very slowly in vans with the hazard lights on, and so forth, not act as some sort of brutal militia. We don't do things that way in Britain.

“But someone at school told me,” he protested, “that park rangers are always at least lightly armed. That's true isn't it?”

Another urban myth stands up and starts running.

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