Rebirth of Daddy Cool

Have you noticed that dads seem to be everywhere? A few years back, 'dad' was a single-word pejorative. 'Dad' was a mortgaged-up, stressed-out geek dressed in pleated chinos and driving a style-free estate. Now the young dad has been reborn and remodelled as the untapped end of the middle-youth demographic. So, we now have Dad Lit (Nick Hornby, Tony Parsons), Dad Rock (Paul Weller, Oasis), and the Lad Mag redefined as Dad Mag with the recent launch of James Brown's Jack.

One effect of this shift in attitude is a surge of 'dad ads': examples of 'Dadvertising' include McDonald's weekend father playing one-up-dad-ship with his boy's mother, and the Vauxhall Zafira promising to imbue the pilot of the people carrier with 'daddy cool' on the school run. 'The new dad ads are a part of the post-Beckham joy of being a father and externalising one's feelings,' says advertising expert and style watcher Peter York. He's right. These days, dads are externalising their paternal instincts all over the shop.

Take former bad boy turned doting dad, Johnny Depp, bragging, 'My goal in life is to be, above all else, the best of fathers. I don't want to miss any part of her [his daughter Lily-Rose] growing up.' Or Johnny Vaughan saying, 'I truly believe the three-wheel, all-terrain pushchair has taken over from the sports car as the ultimate male accessory.' Then there's Ozzy Osbourne hamming it for MTV's docusoap The Osbournes, as clueless but lovable Metal Dad - a Homer Simpson with tattoos, if you will - telling his kids, 'I f*****g love you more than life itself.'

The 21st-century fathers (even Ozzy) wear their fatigue, caused by too many daft-o'clock-in-the-morning feeds, like badges of honour, just as they did their hangovers in the self-centred Nineties. One hands-on dad was recently overheard complaining that he knew his child was taking over his life when he opened a Playboy centrefold, clocked the pneumatic lovely lying naked on a king-size divan and thought to himself, 'Doesn't that bed look comfy ...'

So why do men feel a frisson of pride when they discover pockets of old-style fatherhood are still thriving? Could it be a bit of us hankers for the days when dads didn't change nappies or do school runs? Is there a thirtysomething man alive who doesn't stifle a bit of macho pride when a Premiership match is interrupted by the Tannoy announcement, 'Will Dave Phillips please go to Wood Green Hospital, where his wife has just given birth to a baby girl'?

My shameless showboating: Simon Mills
Unfree, scared, father: Tim Lott
Neither braver nor wiser
A domestic god gets nimble with a needle