IT DOES not take a genius to work out why so many men stay with their parents until they are in their mid-20s.

Home cooking, washing, ironing and all the creature comforts an unrealistically low rent can buy make that decision to flee the family nest even harder.

I remember my dad used to employ a number of well-worked (and well-worn) sayings when the realisation of what he and my mum were doing for me sank in.

"You treat this place like a hotel," he used to tell me, although I was careful not to mention that it would be a fairly poor hotel where the guests were loudly criticised for lying in bed too long, forgetting to flush the loo and sneaking around late at night with girls.

"You're in for a shock when you leave," he would add and I certainly was.

Indeed, when I moved into my first flat at 23, I was shocked to find just how high it was possible to stack unwashed plates and how many dirty clothes could be squeezed into a laundry basket.

Of course, the reason why so many like myself stick around for so long is pure and simple: mums.

It was mum who waited on me, who brought me breakfast in bed, who bailed me out when the going got tough.

"I'm not your mother," my wife will state on those rare occasions when I forget my place in the domestic scheme of things.

Astonishingly, some lads actually believe that their parents want them to stay and are deluding themselves.

Your parents cannot wait to be rid of you so that they can return to a blissful, carefree life without the worries, both financial and otherwise, attached to kids.

And if on your next birthday they buy you a set of saucepans wrapped in a map and the Echo's Wednesday Property guide, take the hint.