Achieving the right angles so she can see the whole page at once, as well as my face, is tricky. So I learned from the pros and developed ways of talking to camera while keeping the book in shot by watching make-up influencer videos on YouTube. There are no cuddles, obviously. But I try to make up for that by doing all the faces and the voices with the grinning gusto of an over-excited children's television presenter after one-too-many Jelly Babies.

Maybe I push it too far, more for my sake than hers (her reading tastes are limited to about three books a financial quarter, on heavy rotation). My Meg, of Helen Nicholl and Jan Pienkowski's ageless Meg and Mog collection, has gone full Wicked Witch of the West which, it turns out, scares the bejesus out of two-year-olds. My Burglar Bill is starting to sound worryingly like Jason Statham in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. And my Gruffalo... well, as Oscar Wilde once noted, 'I love acting; it is so much more real than life.' Well, I consider it a crying shame he never got to see my interpretation of Julia Donaldson's most famous creation, my version of whom breathes fire and eats children over the phone.

But the girl seems to like most of my characters. And when she doesn't, she just says, 'Scary, daddy, I not like it,' raises a little E.T. finger to the screen and switches me off. It's a power shift, but it's good - just the kind of constructive criticism I need to keep me sharp.