YOU will have to excuse me if my words are a little slurrrred (sorrrry!) this week but the Haywood household has been in something of a celebratory mood. After weeks of walking around with upper lips so stiff you could hang your hat on them, we have all now blown a big raspberry of delight, let our hair down, kicked up our heels and got well and truly drunk.

Well, to be frank only I got well and truly drunk (during which time I actually forgot my own name and plumped for Frank instead) but I like to think I was doing it for the family.

And anyway, I know for a fact that my mum had double her usual quantity of booze at the weekend and my dad got absolutely off his head on exotic cocktails. OK, so she had two glasses of wine instead of her usual one ("Heck, its Saturday night, let's go crazy, Ken!") and he munched his way through the last of the Christmas chocolate liqueurs which, rather spookily I think, no one can actually remember buying. But you get the drift, it was party time and the Haywood hellraisers were raising hell.

Now I don't necessarily need an excuse to break open a bottle or three of booze - difficult to believe I know, but it's true - but if I did this would have been the best excuse yet.

During the last few weeks my mum has been through a hellish time with a health scare that has rocked the whole family.

As a rule we are not a sickly lot, and mum in particular has always been ridiculously healthy, so we were somewhat unprepared when a routine scan revealed she had breast cancer.

Even now, when the worst is well and truly behind us, it still makes me go cold just to write those words.

Luckily the tumour was detected early and was removed quickly before it had a chance to spread and, after a short course of radiotherapy and a longer course of pill-popping, mum was told at the end of last week that she should be free and clear (hence the rather boozy weekend).

But what if, like far too many women, she had decided not to go for her regular three-year scan? What if she had followed the advice of some of her friends - all supposedly intelligent, well-informed women - who said they didn't bother going for theirs because it was embarrassing and uncomfortable?

The answer is obvious. Without a scan she would have had to rely on self-examination, something else that many women find too uncomfortable to bother doing, and would probably not have discovered the lump until vital weeks had passed.

Even then she might not have gone to her doctor with the problem immediately, choosing instead the "ignore it and it will go away" philosophy that some women seem to think will work just as well as surgery, radiotherapy and long-term medication.

The scanning system is by no means perfect - three years between scans is two years too long - but to choose not to take advantage of a check-up simply because it's a tad uncomfortable is short-sighted, self-deluding and downright stupid. After all the hard work of the Breast Cancer Awareness campaign, pleading ignorance is not an option anymore. We know the statistics, we know the importance of self-examination, we know that regular scans are vital, and we know that seeking help quickly can literally mean the difference between life and death.

In other words, we know the rules now, so let's live by them.

Strong stuff, eh? Well, now you can relax, that's the end of my sermon for the day. And to lift the mood a little, I thought I'd let my mum have the final word (she usually does).

"Well," she said the day after her op, as I perched on her hospital bed and ate all her grapes.

"That's the topless modelling career over then."