My son Niall is now 20 months old. He can walk, he can hit a ball with his plastic golf club (as long as the ball has approximately the same dimensions as Neil Lennon's backside) and he can drink wine. Personally, I reckon he now has all the skills needed for a fulfilling life, but his mother thinks he should also be able to talk. What's more, she thinks if he wants to get on in the world he should be able to talk sense.

"Not necessarily,'' I told her. "He could still get a job as a DJ on Real Radio. He could also stand as a candidate for the Nationalists."

Of course, she never believes anything I tell her. So now we have embarked on a new campaign to get Niall to talk more.

As with all military campaigns, you need to know where you are starting from in order to know where you are going to, although it might also help if you knew what your girlfriend was talking about when you are planning a military campaign and I didn't, so when Maggie was planning our military campaign I pretended to know what she was talking about and nodded my head but, between you and me, I was really reading a golf magazine.

What I do know, however, is this: Niall has a vocabulary of 15 words.

They are as follows: ball, bubble, mama, shoe, cheese, cheers, nose, dada, book, hiya, hullo, tea, choo-choo, car, please. I think this is pretty good going for a guy who still thinks it is cool to eat baby shampoo.

For instance, if he wanted to have cheddar and Earl Grey for breakfast, then drive to the train station to catch the 9.15 to Edinburgh, say hello to the guard, ask the person sitting next to him if they had the new Ian Rankin novel and if they did could he borrow it and, when he got to Edinburgh, ask the way to the new Salvador Dali exhibition, then he's got all the words he needs - cheese, tea, car, choo-choo, book, please, dada.

But, as I said before, what do I know?

So my role in the campaign is to read to him every night before he goes to bed. Apparently, this will help his vocabulary.

I started him off on Tony Jacklin's autobiography but he started crying. So did I, come to mention it.

Then we moved on to the last Martin Amis novel but he said, though not in so many words, it was overrated claptrap and if I kept reading it to him he would deliberately fail all his O-levels when the time came and - this was the clincher - he would support Aberdeen.

Finally, I tried a book called Snuggle Up, Little One - A Treasury of Bedtime Stories. And he loved it. Actually, when I say he loved it, what I really mean is I loved it, although I will admit I'm slightly worried about how much I loved it.

This might come as a surprise to regular readers but I used to be a fan of nineteenth-century French literature. Balzac, for instance, was a great favourite of mine.

I liked his bitter reflections on the French bourgeoisie. I liked his sense of humour; and the great, broad sweep of his narrative scope, as he so amply illustrated in his famous story of unrequited love across the class barrier, Cousin Bette and the Great Sweep of Paris.

But something happened along the way. My brain turned to mush. I found I didn't have time to read books. The last novel I managed to get through was actually, I can't remember the last time I read a novel.

But I have to say Snuggle Up, Little One has reawakened my interest in the magic of literature. Tonight, for instance, I read Niall a short story called I Don't Want To Go To Bed, which is about a tiger cub who tells his mother he doesn't want to go to bed and runs off into the jungle.

He then visits his friends to ask them if they would stay up all night. He visits his number-one friend the lion cub first, but he is having his ears washed. Then he goes to his second-best friend, the little hippo. But he's having his bedtime bath. Then he goes to see the little elephant. But he's in bed listening to his bedtime story.

By this stage, I was captivated. Would the tiger cub ever find someone to stay up all night, and if he did where would they go?

Alas, I won't know for another night because Niall fell asleep before I got to the end, although not before telling me if I didn't stop reading him such infantile claptrap he'll tell his mother I took him to the driving range the other day when I was supposed to take him to the swings.

Maybe Maggie was right. Maybe this reading really is good for expanding his vocabulary.

I wonder if it will do the same for me?