Clinging on to childhood

I HAVE a friend who is the epitome of "having it all". The boss of a successful business, built up over 20 years, she's also a busy mum-of-three and spends her weekends ferrying her sporty children to matches and tournaments around the region.

She hosts charity events, organises ski-ing holidays, throws supper parties and always manages to look immaculate, despite barely having a minute to herself. She is, in short, a proper grown-up.

Yet every night she goes to bed clutching a piece of old rag that she's been devoted to since she was a toddler. Originally a comfort blanket, it now resembles a tatty grey dishcloth and for 40 years she hasn't sleep without it. She even has a ritual of wrapping it around her head, so she goes to bed looking like a rather grubby Mr Bump. Luckily, she has a very laid back husband.

It seems she's not alone in clinging to a childhood remnant. According to a new survey, 3.8 million adults still snuggle up to their favourite soft toy at night - that's a heck of a lot of adults clinging onto saggy old cloth animals and bits of blanket for comfort.

I don't think I ever felt the need for anything like that, even as an infant. I didn't suck my thumb, nor was I fiercely attached to a particular soft toy. I still have my old teddy, Ackroyd, (inexplicably named after a classmate I didn't even like, Susan Ackroyd), but because I never actually played with him he's practically pristine.

My brother, however, used to shove a corner of his blanket into his mouth while sucking his thumb. Without it, he was hysterical. My mum even sewed a piece of blanket material onto the top of his sleeping-bag for camping holidays. My sister chewed the face off her teddy; it ended up looking like roadkill but she wouldn't go to bed without it.

Emma's nephew Jack and his Mickey Mouse toy

One of my nephews had several comfort rags, even an old tea-towel would do occasionally, and he called them ‘num-nums’ after the noise he made while sucking them. His brother, Jack, was devoted to a cloth Mickey Mouse given to him as a baby. He wouldn’t let Mickey out of his life for the first few years of his life and his mum had to wait until he was asleep before she could sneak the saggy rodent into the washing machine. Even the pet dog knew that, when it came to pinching socks and soft toys from Jack’s bedroom, Mickey was off limits.

According to the survey, by Argos and children's charity Barnardo's who have teamed up for a charity toy exchange scheme, almost four million adults still keep their favourite childhood companion to help them sleep or relax.

More than a quarter of us own at least two treasured childhood possessions, and while one in five women proudly admit to still having old toys, one in eight men keep theirs in a secret place.

Much-loved toys are part of your life and tell a story. Snuggling up to an old teddy may seem weird in middle-age, but maybe it's no different to collecting dolls' houses or model railways, or that Doctor Who memorabilia stashed in the attic. Nothing is quite so primal as the relics of childhood.