I am regularly delighted and amazed by the way Mudcatters (I love you all madly) can spend so much time and effort on analysing and debating the precise meanings of words in innocent little songs, digging up historically improbable explanations and applying modern ideas to...         Oh, look! It's just a romping little number where the chorus words fit the tune and make it easy to sing.

I learned 'This Old Man' from my parents in the 1930s, when just about every working class child knew it. We didn't think of it as having any particular meaning, anti-Irish or otherwise - though I have to admit that those were unworried times when the seasons followed one another in proper order and everyone knew that the Irish were dimwitted comedians, the German had square heads and ate nothing but sausage, the Italians were dagoes and carried knives and only the Brits were really nice people.

We have all changed. The song hasn't.