Just in time for Fathers’ Day, when thousands of British men will receive cards addressed to ‘The World’s Best Dad!’, a new report from the Fatherhood Institute has come out demonstrating the statistical improbability of the claim. The average father in the UK spends only 24 minutes looking after his children for every hour their mother spends, the lowest ratio in Europe. And given that these figures are based on self-reporting questionnaires, rather than a researcher with a stopwatch, this is almost certainly an overestimate.

‘For ten years or so, my name was “that jerk”,’ says Professor Richard Thaler, president of the American Economics Association and principal architect of the behavioural economics movement. ‘But that was a promotion. Before, I was “Who’s he?”’ Thaler has had to get used to putting noses out of joint. His academic research, initially controversial, sparked an entirely new branch of economics, and now governments are adopting his theories across the globe.

My home town of Oldham is the sort of place people imagine when they think of ‘The North’. It has mill chimneys, redbrick terraced streets and a rain-swept football ground (the third highest in the country) where supporters of the perpetually struggling Oldham Athletic queue for hot Vimto or a bag of black peas. Oldham is now the most deprived town in England, according to the Office for National Statistics. Crime and unemployment are high; investment, wages and prospects generally are pitifully low.