The Godfather

One of my best friends became a father for the second time today after his wife gave birth to a baby girl in the early hours of the morning. I’m godfather to their first child, also a girl, and I’ve been asked to be godfather to their second child too.

This is obviously very touching as it means the parents have some affection for the big-nosed idiot who occasionally drops round their house but it also means I have some responsibility to be a positive role model and help educate the child in the ways of the world. Which brings me onto Harry Potter...

My first godchild celebrated her birthday at the start of the year and, halfwit that I am, I have only just got round to buying her a present. When I asked her what she wanted she said the second and third Harry Potter films but when I got to the video shop this morning I pondered the wisdom of this purchase for a good 10 minutes.

For those who’ve managed to avoid or studiously ignore the Potter phenomenon, I worship at your feet. But the rest of us have had to put up with the bespectacled trainee wizard git for some time now and I wasn’t sure whether I was happy perpetuating this horrible phenomena any further when it came to my goddaughter. And there are good reasons for this...

The main reason, of course, is because I am a horrible bigot who even now, after several years drinking lattes and eating sushi, still likes to occasionally wear his working-class credentials on his sleeve and remains deeply suspicious of anything so patently middle-class as Quidditch, girls called Hermione and the rest of the Harry Potter jolly broomsticks nonsense.

It’s also a dangerous thing to encourage children to attend a boarding school of any description thinking that it will be a land of comedy wizards and magic-based japery. Such establishments are places of fear and unhappiness and produce members of the Tory Party and are to be avoided at all costs!

Sadly, I eventually succumbed to my goddaughter’s wishes and bought her the Harry Potter films. But I will be scouring the video shop again later this week to find her some more positive role models via the medium of film.

Early ideas to educate her about independence and style and not following the crowd include The Wild One with Marlon Brando, Rebel Without A Cause with James Dean, Enter The Dragon with Bruce Lee and Violent Cop with Beat Takeshi. I was going to also buy her Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 subtitled classic The Seven Samurai to teach her about morality and obligation but that may be too much for a four-year-old...