How to juggle with nappies

During the past 50 or so years, the glass ceiling, although far from being smashed, has been given a really good kicking and the way things used to be is slowly being forgotten, although the odd exception still remains, including that old favourite that men can’t multi-task.

It has been accepted the gruffer sex are far more comfortable with doing just one job at a time, although I did see a hero driving a builders merchants’ lorry the other day, at the same time as smoking a fag and using his mobile phone. Blokes not being able to properly multi-task anywhere near as well as women is one of the key pillars of modern life and we have always accepted it as fact. But every now and again this gets challenged and last week it was the turn of Tory MP Tom Tugendhat to show the world he could juggle as well as any woman.

He admitted to changing nappies while conducting radio interviews about matters of State, including during appearances on the Today programme, the ultimate in serious broadcasting and the home of the fearsome John Humphrys. I have long suspected that politicians facing Humphrys would be well advised to pull on a pair of Pampers, given his track record for sometimes excoriating interrogations but fair play to Tugendhat for having enough confidence in his own abilities to focus on something other than being quizzed by a curmudgeonly Welshman. His revelation was so interesting to some that Today did a follow-up piece and invited the MP to join a panel discussion, during which, fellow panellists (women) said that mums would not feel the need to boast about such a thing, given that they do it all the time. Tugendhat made the great point that humans have the ability to do more than one thing at once but it is just that some people do it better.

As a working dad, who is regular on the school run and the dominant figure in our kitchen, I know a thing or two about multi-tasking, as do millions of other juggling blokes, but I am just not sure whether society is ready for another new fact just yet.