Life with father

Clarence Day's comic stories of his father, Clarence "Clare" Day Senior are taken from the "New Yorker" magazine.

They portray a rambunctious, overburdened Wall Street broker who demands that everything from his family should be just so.

When it isn't, all hell breaks loose and an amusing sight it is too from a safe enough distance.

Clare is intolerant, tyrannical and plain obnoxious in his constant battle to harness the world to his way of thinking.

He rages against his staff, his cook, his wife, his horse, salesmen, the need for holidays, the need to be ill and, of course, the inability of his children to live up to his impossible standards.

Yet, the more he rails, the more comic a figure he cuts and the more he blusters, the more lovable this makes him to his own beleaguered family.