I am the youngest of three boys, all born within about a year of each other. Becky came along six years after me, an accident in mum and dad’s sex life; the child people used to dub ‘the afterthought’.
Mum was always the disciplinarian in our family – Dad was a mild-mannered travelling salesman who was away a great deal. As was the custom in the 1960s, part of our home discipline regime was the occasional smacked bottom. Growing up, the sight of one – or indeed all – of us across Mum’s knee, underpants down and getting their bare bottom thoroughly tanned, was a fairly common one.