Vernon Kay issues fiery response to BBC co-star as he defends parenting method

Vernon Kay told his BBC Radio 2 co-star Jeremy Vinenot to get him "angry", as the pair discussed a recent report about children doing chores. Jeremy brought attention to the study from ParentKind, which found that less than half of UK children help with housework at home.

After presenting the statistics, Jeremy pondered whether "the whole point of childhood is that you don't do them," before asking Vernon: "Isn't that true?".

In response, the husband of Strictly Come Dancing's Tess Daly light-heartedly replied: "Don't make me angry Jeremy. You won't like me when I'm angry."

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Not stopping there, Jeremy went on to say: "It's a horrible world out there, do you need to throw in, 'Tidy your bedroom?'"

Expressing his views, Vernon passionately replied: "Yeah! How do you learn?".

"How do you learn responsibility for yourself? You can't learn responsibility for yourself until the age of 16."

Provoking further debate, Jeremy made things personal by asking Vernon: "But what if one day your children said to you, 'I had a great childhood, except I kept being asked to wash up?'"

Vernon responded: "Doesn't bother me! That means mummy and daddy have taught you hard work.

"It starts at the sink, washing up, get involved, stacking up the dishwasher if that's your equivalent these days, siding the table, you know, that kind of stuff. Going down the pit, that was the old school equivalent, some of our parents were working at 16."

Jeremy proceeded to enquire whether Vernon would permit his daughters to take up chimney sweeping, to which he said no, due to their lack of skills for such work.

Chuckling, he continued: "I would love for you to meet my eldest Phoebe and get her to explain to you Jeremy Vine why she's not going up the chimney."

He proceeded to declare: "Chores are good for you, they really are!

"I mean, we all hated doing chores but in hindsight they're good for you, I did all of that."

Amused by his enthusiastic stance on the matter, Jeremy carried on: "It's always the last story that gets you, isn't it."

"It really is, well it's you that gets me, I love it," Vernon responded, laughing.

The presenter has two daughters Phoebe, 20, and Amber, 16, with his wife of 22 years, Tess Daly.

Previously speaking about their parenting approach, he revealed that he and Tess "alternate the roles" of "good cop, bad cop".

He told The Mirror: "We've not pushed them in a certain direction to continue their education or whatever. It's totally up to them.

"As a parent, you can only hold their hand and say, 'This is right or wrong' for so long. There's got to be a point where you take them off the lead and let them discover life."