ODDLY, my surname is Perkins but my mother has sometimes gone by the name of Gubbins.

Not that there is any question of me having been born on the wrong side of the blanket, as they used to say. If you knew my parents you wouldn't dream of suggesting it.

But during my childhood days I would sometimes try to pull the wool over their eyes and my mum would respond by saying: "Who do you think I am? Gubbins?"

You might not have a Gubbins among your relations but slightly strange, frequently repeated sayings can be found in every family. Often the same ones.

I would have been a rich man, for example had I plucked a crisp fiver off a branch every time my parents told me that money does not grow on trees.

Rich? According to my exasperated dad, I already was during those teenage years. At least I was used to luxurious living judging by the number of times he told me that I treated the place like a hotel.

But the biggest mysteries that you carry with you after growing up are those bold statements that are churned out as indisputable facts and, even now, when you have a sneaky suspicion they might be myths, you are just not quite sure.

Does eating the raw cake mix give you worms, as my wife was led to believe?

Does swallowing toothpaste give you stomach ache, as I was told?

What about gobbling down a banana too fast?

And, talking of bananas, should you not eat the ends, as one Echo colleague refuses to do, because a tiny fruit spider often lives inside it?

(And will a tree grow inside you if you swallow an apple pip?) We have all heard them. How many times, as a boy, did I rub a dock leaf on a nettle sting because everyone said it soothed it. Did it really?

What about when it is raining? Will you really catch your death of cold, as my mum used to say, if you go out without a hat?

(Don't pull that sceptical face... after all, the wind might change.) And what about having a bath straight after having tea or supper? Do you really risk drowning?

And could you grow potatoes on the back of my neck if I didn't wash it? No? Thought not.

Every day my father would brush his short-back-and-sides vigorously, claiming that stimulating the scalp helped prevent baldness. He still has a decent mop up top so maybe it works?

And will your hair go curly if you don't eat your crusts, as another colleague was told?

There were rituals that were carried out without question, like taking the telly plug out before going to bed in case you set the house on fire. Was that wise or unnecessary?

What about closing the curtains during a thunderstorm? (By the way, you know a storm is coming when the ants swarm, don't you?) I'm not sure even now if these truisms' are common sense or rubbish. If my mum wasn't living 100 miles away I would ask her right now but she would just tell me to carry on doing them all, just to be on the safe side.

In fact, if she lived here with us today, she would probably stretch down behind the telly and take the plug out herself, to make sure it was done.

Then she'd look up at me, sitting there with my feet up watching her do all the work.

"Who do you think you are?" my mother (Gubbins') would ask. "Lord Muck?"