Now and again, through ill-timed bouts of channel surfing, I catch snippets of ghastly daytime talk shows like Kilroy and Trisha. And occasionally they have guests with personal problems which, I’m ashamed to admit, I find heartily amusing.

Naturally - in the grand tradition of laughing at the misfortunes of others - I only see the funny side when they’re problems which I can confidently assert will never afflict me. Take, for example, the guests whose great blight is a terrible shame of their own family. “Ho ho,” I think to myself. “How hilarious it is that this poor person is embarrassed by his or her own family members! Thank goodness my own relatives are well-balanced law abiding people who will never give me cause to hang my head in shame!”

And now I learn the terrible, terrible truth: someone’s written to the newspaper about my dad’s inability to use apostrophes.

If you happen to have a copy of the Leicester Mercury from the fourteenth of this month, you might care to turn to the Letters page and read this note from Brandon H Long. He says:

Admittedly, inappropriate apostrophes are to be found almost everywhere (such as in the Market Street pub which offers “a range of malt whisky’s” and the shop on Humberstone Road advertising “whirlpool’s and sauna’s")

The shop on Humberstone Road belongs to my dad. Suddenly I look back on those episodes of Vanessa where dismayed youngsters admit their parents’ predilection to slaughter a goat in the kitchen whenever there’s a full moon, or that their mother’s relationship with the family dog is closer than nature intended, and I feel their pain. Can it be true that I share the DNA of someone who thinks there’s an apostrophe in the plural of ’sauna’? Would one more shuffling of the genetic deck have dealt me a defective apostrophe gene?

It’s all so much to take in. I feel the need for some kind of closure.

Dad, fancy going on The Jerry Springer Show?