First, weigh your nanny

This being the time of year when people are hiring new nannies and au pairs, I would like to offer some words of caution: do not hire a fatty. Although it is no doubt offensive and quite possibly illegal to say so, my considerable experience of the fat ones is that they are not very good. When my daughter was about a year old, we hired a great fat girl from Northumberland. I was sceptical about having something so space-consuming and undecorative in our moderately sized house, but held my tongue. I shouldn’t have, for within days of her starting work she revealed that she was a Jehovah’s Witness. Quite apart from the fact that she had lied by omission in her interview, there was the concern that she might decide, according to her religion, that our daughter should not be treated by doctors in the event of an accident or illness.