Lockdown dad's army is still soldiering on...

Ireland now has among the highest number of boomerang kids in Europe, figures show.

And if I read one more twenty-something kidult moaning about the indignity of being locked down with their folks I'm going to neck this bottle of Old Spice that I'm currently wrapping.

A combination of four- figure rent, office closures and zero craic sent young adults (and some not so young adults) scampering home to their mammies and daddies over the past year.

Bressie (40) is just one of the stars who revealed he had returned to his childhood home in Mullingar during the pandemic after the sale of an apartment fell through.

The Blizzards frontman has, of course, since happily managed to purchase his first home in Dublin - but don't tell my Da that, OK?

Set in the context of a killer global virus that has so far claimed the lives of over 3.8 million people in 200 countries, having to suffer through Liveline on a daily basis isn't all that bad.

So I'm over listening to my fellow Covid boomerangers waa-ing about everything they've missed out on while stuck at home over the past 16 months, as if their ageing parents are somehow living their best lives with their grown-ass children still living under their roof.

That's why today I want to show some love to the boomerang dads up and down the country who never complain about being served up vegan dinners, listening to WAP at full blast or - as of next week - having to sit through Love Island.

We are not the first generation forced to return to the nest for a while and likely won't be the last. Stay-at-home daughters of widowed pensioners like myself have long since been part of the fabric of Irish society.

Expedited by lockdown, by now, me and the auld lad have pretty much got our Steptoe and Daughter routine down, lumpy porridge included.

Is it what either of us might have envisaged for ourselves at our respective stages of life? Probably not, but there are lots of mutual benefits to living in a multi-generational household that don't get any airtime.

On this day of celebration, much attention is sure to lavished on the first-time dads who were unable to be there to welcome their little one into the world during the pandemic, and rightly so.

Let's not forget about the 'vintage' das who've been there all along though.