I’m far too soft to ever be a super-rich parent

Self-sufficient: Woody Cook with DJ mother Zoe Ball Say you were a super-rich celebrity. Would you buy your children property, and give them trust funds big enough to ensure they need never do a day’s work? Or would you cut off financial support at 18, so that they can have the dignity of standing on their own two feet, rather than grow lazy and spoiled?

It’s not an easy question. If you’re lucky, though, your children will answer it for you. Woody Cook – 20-year-old son of Fatboy Slim, the DJ, and Zoe Ball, of Radio 2 – has said he doesn’t want hand-outs from his successful parents.

“Everyone has to leave the nest and forge their own lives,” he says. “I chose to be self-sufficient early, as living without the financial aid of my parents is important to me.”

Good for him. He’s clearly a fine, upstanding young man. Mind you, if I were super-rich, I don’t think I could bear the thought of my child being hard-up, no matter how determined he was to make his own way in life. I’m far too soft.

Next time I visited his mouldy bedsit, I’d probably slip him a little something as a gift, just to tide him over. A Bugatti Veyron, say, or a spare Picasso.