I've never been a dedicated follower of fashion. Just this week I was accused of having the same haircut as Sven-Goran Eriksson.

Thanks a lot.

I have to beg my wife to iron a shirt if I want to go out looking smart. And the only reason I manage to make it in to work in a shirt and tie is because, for some unknown reason, my wife has agreed to iron a shirt for me every evening. Colleagues comment on what a fantastic job she does putting the creases in all the right places.

I wear the same pair of trousers for days on end (sometimes weeks) as I slob around the house and garden. I can trace the history of the last few days by the food stains on them. Chocolate, pasta sauce, toddler greasy fingerprints.

My wife is always very smart, but she's no slave to fashion.

Little Miss Parnell, however, at the tender age of two years 10 months, displays all the signs of being a fashion victim.

True, she hates having her hair dried so she's got lots of lovely, but unruly, golden curls. And she only wears purple. Purple T-shirts, purple trousers.

If I tell her that all the purple clothes are in the wash she accepts that she'll have to wear something else.

"We can pretend that blue is purple, daddy," she concedes.

"Whatever," I mumble pleased to get away without a fight.

Now picture, if you will, the Parnell household at 8am one morning. Wife is getting ready to go out the door to work. I'm just getting dressed having had the second shower. As I button up my shirt and pull on my socks I ask my wife where Emily is.

I'm taking her to nursery in just a few minutes and I want to check if she's ready.

"She went upstairs," says my wife, "to get some chocolate."

I grow pale and start to shake. Images of a toddler caked in dairy milk flash into my head.

I try to speak but words don't come. I stutter and finally spit out something like: "Why didn't you stop her?"

Wife looks up and says, calmly: "It's okay, we haven't got any chocolate so she won't find any."

I hop upstairs, one sock on, one sock off and breathe a sigh of relief when I see Emily. She hasn't found the chocolate.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"Yes daddy," she says. "I'm just putting on my nail polish."

I laugh. Then I see the bottle in her hand and colour on her toes. I move closer. She's right. Her foot is covered in nail varnish.

"Karen," I shout. "Don't worry. Emily hasn't got the chocolate. She's painting her nails instead."

There wasn't time to get the polish off. I put a sock over it. And that is why my daughter went to nursery with a foot that Vivien Westwood would have loved. And it was purple, little darling.