RICHARD ORD: ​It's neck and neck in the race for the Exasperation League title

You’re probably thinking children should be up there. But I reckon once they hit adulthood, they slip out of the stress zone and become standout leaders in the Exasperation League.

With my two boys (laughingly described as men, purely by dint of being over 18) exasperation is the dominant feeling.

Take our Isaac aged 19. From a distance, all seems good. Fit, healthy and building on his education by taking a degree at university.

This is the same Isaac, however, who glides through life with little to no grasp of real world politics. If you remember not that long ago, when Liz Truss became Prime Minister, I mentioned in a column that he was blissfully unaware of the tumult in politics to get her there.

“You do know we have a new Prime Minister don’t you Isaac?” I asked him at the time.

“Don’t even know his name,” he replied.

“It’s a she,” I told him. He shrugged his shoulders. Maybe we all should have.

I can report that things have improved, if only slightly. On one of his rare visits home, he mentioned the current Prime Minister. Bonus point that he got the sex right.

“Yeah, Richie Sunak,” he said.

“It’s Rishi Sunak,” I pointed out. “R-I-S-H-I.”

“I know how you spell his name,” he said, “But it’s pronounced Richie… isn’t it?”

Maybe our Isaac has got it right. Why bother following the ins and outs of politics if it’s only going to leave you exasperated at those who don’t?

Before I put him on his train back to his digs, I asked if he needed anything for university? Pens, textbooks, a protractor? “You couldn’t get me a bottle of vodka could you?”

No, that was for me…

His older brother Bradley, 23, while more politically aware, is an equally exasperating individual at times.

After completing a degree in Quantity Surveying (I think it’s something to do with counting bricks) he decided to change tack and study politics.

Don’t get me wrong, as long as he’s happy, I’m happy. As I put it to him. “Guess instead of building the world, you want to change it?”

“Suppose so,” he said, adding, “Have you seen my new tattoo?”

With his renewed interest in politics, who could it be? Winston Churchill? Lenin? Che Guevara? Don’t say it’s Nigel Farage. He lifted his sleeve to reveal… Bart Simpson in a football strip.

Make that two bottles of vodka…