How do you tackle the facts of life? Well for a start, they are the FACTS of life. Not the fairy stories, not the rubbish product of a misguided mind, the FACTS and only the facts. I make Richard Dawkins look like a shirker when it comes to whipping away comfort blankets and pouring scorn on whimsy.

Having coffee and cake at a friend's house, I met a heavily pregnant mother of two boys - aged five and three - who divulged that she had explained where the baby in her tummy had come from by saying,

"It's magic, darling!"

So I shouted, the volume muffled slightly by cake:

"You can't say that!"

For Christ's sake woman, we don't live in Ireland in 1952, is what I also could have said. The other mummies hastened to mumble pleasantries about house prices. But I was aghast that a supposedly sane woman in charge of two bright and inquisitive children could have let them down by telling them such nonsense.

There is no ideal age at which to sit them down and hit them with it, but don't dither too long, or some other kid will have got to them first with their version of what their Mum and 'Uncle' Dave get up to when Daddy's out at work. You don't need to embellish or paint graphic pictures in full scientific technicolour; as long as they receive what sounds like a straight answer, children are happy to leave it there. The very first stage for toddlers could be as little as:

"The baby grew from an egg in Mummy's tummy - well, Daddy put a seed in there - yes, you can watch CBeebies now...".

As with the act itself, it's a process best taken one step at a time.