IT'S GOOD TO RETAIN THE GENERATION GAP

AGE is only a number is the old saying. I agree, I am 46 and off to Glastonbury this month to perform my comedy act and I am taking along my 21-year-old daughter. Some people feel sorry that poor Ashley will have to suffer her old mother at one of the funkiest festivals in the world, but we have great fun together.

Ashley and I love each other's company, but I don't play that creepy game of being the "Cool Mum" and behaving like her older sister. I am her Mum; that is the starting point of everything that we are. We travel together and have worked on stage as a double act and we have started writing together.

To this day, if Ashley uses bad language on stage I balk. Some of her material is scathing and politically incorrect. That I can handle, but I hate to hear her swear.

We can go onstage, laugh together, be caustically sarcastic to one another and basically play one-upmanship in front of an audience for the biggest laugh yet, the minute we are off stage, I am checking she has eaten dinner, pulling up her jeans so her knickers won't show and am making sure she has a hanky to blow her stuffy nose.

We don't dress alike or share the same fashion sense. I am small and she is tall. We would resemble the Krankies.

I abhor mothers who dress in glittery teen tops, parade slack, 40-year-old midriffs and try to dance like Beyoncé beside their beautiful daughters, as if some of that youth and beauty will automatically spread on to them.

You don't compete with your daughter for sexual attention, unless you are clearly in need of some social-work help. There is an essence of deep-seated envy within that relationship.

I don't care how wee, fat and Hobbit-like I look beside my tall, beautiful child. That's nature for you. That's what happens when the next generation starts to overtake you in height, intelligence, elasticity and overall flexibility. I have had my day and I spent it back in 1980, when I married her tall, lovely dad.

I have an old acquaintance from London and she has a daughter the same age as Ashley. She and her daughter look like a "before and after" image. Both are bright blondes, sporting wood-stain fake tans, tight, shiny clothes and teetering on high, strappy shoes and they go out drinking together and swear to be best friends forever.

I don't want to be best friends with my daughter. My close pal is Monica and I share with her all my deep-seated insecurities, my lasting crush on Roland Gift and any emotional worries that keep me awake. That's not the kind of stuff you want your child to deal with.

Being close to your daughter doesn't include making her privy to your dirty or daft secrets. You can have a close and loving, supportive relationship that includes trust and sharing.

Ashley is my harshest critic when it comes to my writing, comedy or career. I trust her judgment and she often directs me and gives me honest notes after a show, as she really gets who I am.

Sometimes she is older and wiser than me and often her advice has been the best I have ever listened to, especially when I wanted to wear a smock dress of hers and she explained that I looked like a pregnant pensioner.

The good thing about being close to her is we share similar music. I am into Kanye West and she loves Fleetwood Mac, but I don't try to squeeze into skinny jeans and have beers with her mates. However, Ashley says I embarrass her in many other ways - like when I asked her loudly on a crowded plane if she remembered the time she called the local priest Mr Husky Beaver, when his name was Mr McClusky-Weaver, or the time we met Noel Gallagher from Oasis at Heathrow and I smiled and said with genuine curiosity: "God, you look familiar - did you used to work in the Iceland freezer shop on Byers Road?"

Ashley still has never forgiven me for that one, but then she really did hurt my pelvic floor in 1986 with her big head.

SYMPATHY WANING

I WILL probably be slated over this, but I like to tell it like it is, so here goes.

People are starting to have sympathy fatigue for the McCann family.

I feel incredibly sorry for the family and hope Madeleine is found alive and well. What concerns me is the lack of any admission of fault from her parents that leaving their three toddlers alone is neglectful.

The NSPCC website states "Babies should never be left alone. If you notice that a child under the age of nine has been left on their own, contact the police on 999."

Mr McCann insists leaving his kids alone in the flat is the same as eating dinner at the bottom of their long garden.

I don't agree: surely houses are alarmed and front doors locked when your babies are tucked in bed, unless you are used to leaving them alone.

HOPING FOR A GAB WITH GIFT

THE Edinburgh Fringe programme came out last Thursday and tickets go on sale from today.

There are about 2,000 shows to choose from this year - two are mine. I am doing two shows daily, stand-up comedy at the Pleasance Dome and a chatshow at the Green Room.

For this, I am hoping to have a real mix of weird and wonderful people. Frank Skinner has provisionally agreed to join me, as has Edwina Currie. My all-time top guest would be Billy Connolly: he is my absolute hero and such a great comic, but he is not going to be in Edinburgh.

What I am most excited about is that the object of my affection, Roland Gift, former frontman of Fine Young Cannibals, has told me that if he comes up to Edinburgh he will be my guest.

I am going on a diet and making sure I have my sexiest dress ready!

CHILDHOOD REVISITED - OW!

BALMAHA beach by Loch Lomond is my wee favourite place to go on sunny days. My husband and I were up there just last week.

I made sure he was slathered in sun block. I, on the other hand, assumed that I am woman made of steel and decided not to bother with the cream. Then I fell asleep.

Now I am Snippy the Lobster Woman - completely red, sore and patchy.

It made me think back to my childhood - the rule of thumb in the 1960s was to go to the beach, get burnt and then just get covered in calamine lotion.

We looked like wee sticky red and white barbers' poles. Three days later we would all sit and peel the skin off our arms from the deflated blisters.

The joys of childhood!