Short of taking him to court, how can I make my darling baby boy (aged 24 1/ ) leave home? 2

HOW my heart burst with fellow feeling for the Italian father who took his 28-year-old son to court in the hope of forcing him to get a job, but ended up being ordered by the judge to carry on supporting him.

For those who missed yesterday’s story, this unfortunate dad — described as ‘making a modest living through writing’ — had been obliged by a divorce settlement to finance his offspring’s tertiary education.

The trouble was that the lad (if that is the right word to describe a man of 28) was taking rather longer about his studies than his hard-pressed old man would have liked.

First, he had taken ‘several years’ more than expected to complete a degree course in literature. And when at last this was over, he signed up for a postgraduate course at Bologna University — in ‘experimental cinema’, if you please (perhaps not the most promising route to self-sufficiency, as many parents may agree).

This was more than his father could bear. At the civil court in Modena, northern Italy, he argued that his son — who was unnamed, to protect his right to privacy — should at least get a part-time job to start paying his own way.

‘He does not deserve any further financial support, having made no effort to find work to support himself,’ he told the Bench.

Aspirations

But the court was having none of it. It ruled that the cinema course was in keeping with the son’s ‘personal aspirations’ and, therefore, must be paid for by his father. God help us all!

Though this case has been little commented on in Britain, apparently it is the talk of Italy, where it highlights the country’s problem with bamboccioni — literally ‘big fat babies’, who never leave home, choosing instead to sponge off their parents.

Oh, how I sympathise with that struggling writer, burdened with the financial responsibilities of fatherhood for so much longer than he had envisaged.

For as regular readers will know, my wife and I, like legions of other British parents these days, have bred a fair few bamboccioni ourselves.

There’s an English word for them, or so I learned yesterday (I’m always the last to hear about these things). ‘Kippers’, they’re known as — and, no, this has nothing to do with Ukip or the referendum.

It’s an acronym for Kids In Parents’ Pockets, Eroding Retirement Savings.

To be fair to our sons, the oldest is a former Kipper, having left the nest at 29 — perhaps permanently this time, after several false starts as a card-carrying member of the Boomerang Generation.

As for the second, who was not only in a home of his own but married by 27, he could never justly be described as a true Kipper.

This leaves just two sons in residence as I write. The younger, at 22, at least has a steady job and some prospect of moving out in the course of the next ten years or so.

But as for the other, aged 24½ — whom I won’t name, to protect his right to privacy (though there may be a clue in my surname) — he is as authentic a Kipper or bamboccione as you’re ever likely to meet.

Indeed, I’m bracing myself to have him still on the premises when he’s 50 and I am 87.

Employed only sporadically since he left university two years ago, with a degree far more glittering than my own, he shows not the slightest inclination to settle down to a steady job.

Nor will he sign on the dole. I hasten to say that I wouldn’t wish him to, because I cling on to an old-fashioned belief that he’s my responsibility, not the state’s. But his reasons are somewhat different.

If I’ve got him right, he doesn’t want to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance because this would oblige him to seek a job!

And isn’t there a risk that the flinthearted Department for Work and Pensions might fix him up with something that wouldn’t fit in with his ‘personal aspirations’, if I may borrow a phrase from that Italian judge?

Tight-fisted

Oh, well, I suppose I should be grateful that he isn’t billing me for a postgraduate course in experimental cinema at Bologna University (though, come to think of it, I’d better not go putting ideas into his head; this could be just the sort of thing he’d like!)

I say this with all the love in the world, but apart from starving him to death by refusing to feed him, how is a poor parent to get rid of such a lad?

It’s not as if we lavish cash on him. On the contrary, I’m the tight-fisted father from hell, keeping the Bank of Mum and Dad firmly closed for fear of further diminishing his incentive to work.

Nor do we indulge him with luxuries. This makes us unlike the average British parents of Kippers, who were found by a survey this week to spend £456 a year — up from £372 in 2014 — on such non-essentials as holidays, Netflix subscriptions and beauty treatments for their adult children living at home.

Indeed, I cancelled our subscription to Sky Sports, in the hope of reducing the pull-factor of the family nest.

But to no avail. Our beloved bamboccione is the most unmaterialistic of souls. When he’s not playing football with friends, he seems perfectly happy spending his days reading the Guardian online in quest of ammunition to fire at his dad in our occasional political arguments.

(He’s a great believer in the redistribution of wealth, is our lad, though not so much in its creation.)

On these occasions, I like to tell him that journalists on the perennially loss-making Guardian live like absentee landlords in the 18th century, feeding off the fat of their ancestral Scott Trust, while never having to do a profitable day’s work.

Where the Dukes of Devonshire and their ilk exploited their tenants for rent, I tell him, these modern-day liberal grandees live off the profits of other companies owned by the Trust, earned often by workers on rock-bottom wages.

Wastrel

Thus, they redistribute wealth from the country’s poorest to the wealthy likes of Polly Toynbee and our son’s particular favourite Left-winger, Owen Jones.

And when money gets tight for the Guardian, the Trust simply sells off another company, just as wastrel landlords in the 18th century would sell the family silver or an inherited farm to make ends meet.

But even speeches such as these (I told you I was the father from hell) don’t seem to drive our boy away.

Still less does he seem to get the message that if everyone lived like him and the Guardian, relying on the labour of others to put roofs over our heads and spag bol on our plates, the global economy would collapse overnight.

At least we British parents of Kippers can comfort ourselves that we have it easier than our counterparts in Italy, where a whopping 65 per cent of ‘children’ aged 18 to 34 still live with their parents, enjoying mamma’s pasta and the other comforts of home.

In Britain, the figure is a more modest 34 per cent — though I see it rising sharply, along with house prices, as the relentless pressure of population growth puts homes of their own ever further out of reach of the young.

But then, of course, in Italy, many of those elderly children have the excuse that they can’t find work, since the euro has driven youth unemployment up to a mortifying 40 per cent.

No such defence is available to our own dear Kipper, and the many others like him, in a country where employment is at a record high — and jobs galore are available to the not-so-fussy.

Any suggestions from fellow sufferers — short of taking the beloved bamboccione to court?