I call him the Senior Archivist because he's been digging away at the roots far longer than any other member of the family. He would like to find out more but is less mobile than he used to be and thinks it high time a younger member took over. He has plotted his own particular branch of the Behagues on velum and has lots of notes and documents on file.

Now in his nineties, he lives in the English West Midlands and prefers the quiet life. He is totally independent, cooks his own meals and tends to a large garden. No callers, please. He is slightly deaf and awaits a second cataract op. For all this, he is remarkably spry and has the appearance of a man in his sixties. The Behagues are a bit like that. They tend to lead full, active lives, and are still beavering away when others have taken to wheel chairs or nursing homes. When he once called to see me at the BBC the receptionist told me my young brother was waiting for me!

Charles, Charlie or Chuck certainly was more like a brother than an uncle. It was he who taught me to drive, fly kites and sail model boats, and he who delighted my children with the jumping rabbits he created from ordinary handkerchiefs.

An Auxiliary Fireman during the war, he was called out to some of the worst fires created by the Luftwaffe, and survived with hardly a scratch, but being a modest chap he never did tell the full story. Like my father, Jack Russell Behague, who survived all the big battles in Flanders, he preferred to keep mum, stay cheerful and forget such dreadful memories. My father did, however, tell us one story. It concerned his Volunteer Regiment's advance against the Germans in France, and as they marched through a totally shattered village they saw that the only item still standing in the rubble was a large signboard. It carried one word - BEHAGUE. His friends cheered loudly at that. It was a good omen, he said.

Charles's son Ted recently acquired a book about the Behagues. It cost a bomb, contained a great many irrelevant pages and nothing whatsover about the history of the family. What it did, however, was to list Behague families throughout the world as follows:

United States - 3. New Zealand - 7. Great Britain - 13. France - 476. Spain - 1.

Undoubtedly, you see, the Froggies have it, and that is where our ancestors came from. If you occasionally have a passion for frogs' legs, cheese, garlic and long sticks of bread it will be the French blood rising in your veins.

Total world population of Behagues, incidentally, is put at 1,248. We have it on very good authority that the number is rising!

There is an enormous amount I could tell you about Charles and the rest of the British Behagues but this site is already bursting