After two years of nothing but crowd scenes in the school Christmas play, we have this week, I am delighted to announce, hit the heady heights of Parts With Something To Actually Do.

No speaking roles yet, I grant you, but the sheer talent on display from the Barnett progeny on Wednesday made me proudly feel as though I was part of some great Hollywood dynasty, such as the Douglases or the Sutherlands. Or perhaps the Simpsons.

It was the first time Alice, who started in reception last year, had taken part in the school play, and she immediately stepped into one of the major parts – one of the Wise, erm, Persons, who follow the star and present baby Jesus with empty cardboard boxes wrapped in shiny paper. She even had her own camel, in the form of one of her classmates.

Alice walked to the stage in a manner I like to think of as “magisterial”, and after chucking – sorry, handing over – her gift (I think it might have been myrrh – what colour is that, exactly, silver?) she sat down on a bench and looked around with an expression that you would definitely call “wise”.

Charlie, now in Year Two, has spent two previous years in relative anonymity – to wit, in reception he was a villager, which involved simply wearing his hat and scarf and mouthing the words to a song he patently didn’t know, and last year he was a sheep, which did actually involve more in the way of wardrobe action – a nose blackened with Kiwi boot polish and some woolly ears.

This year Charlie was a snowflake (it was a very modern Christmas story with all kinds of stuff going on, for anyone about to write in to tell me about the likely lack of snow in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago).

Not only was he a snowflake, he was a singing, dancing snowflake. Now, I’ll grant you, this might not be the sort of thing he wants to be reminded of in about 15 years, but his mum and me were impressed to the point of me “having something in my eye”. The only dancing ability he’s displayed up to now involved violently pogoing with his mates at his birthday party like he was at a Sex Pistols gig in 1978.

So that’s a Wise Personage and a snowflake that spun around right at the front of the stage... I never knew we had so much talent in our family.

Quick, somebody get me the phone number for the Italia Conti stage school...