Like the Swiss family, the people who make squash and marmalade (is that the same people by the way?) and the Labour MP for Coventry called Geoffrey who lent Mr Mandleson hundreds of thousands – Biff, Chip and Kipper have the surname ROBINSON!

I found this out 5 years ago (which I was reminded by Timehop earlier in the week – again, I LOVE Timehop!) but I had forgotten this fact. In the intervening demi-decade I’ve had 2 more kids, so that’s 2 more lots of Oxford Reading Tree ‘fun’ to look forward to.

I discovered this little known gem when in one of the books there is a newspaper in a picture, and it contains an article about the family and uses their surname. Honestly, I’m wasted as an accountant, I should have been a spy. (Although I have just found out it’s on Wikipedia………)

Knowing I have similarly geeky parents as friends – I re-shared this on my Facebook page and imagine my delight when one of my friends could add even more information!  (Her class had written to some authors – and Roderick Hunt, who wrote the 300+ books for this range now used in 80% of UK schools, actually wrote back to them – how exciting!)

It would seem that Kipper is in fact ‘Christopher’ and couldn’t say it as a child so it became Kipper.  Now, as an Elisabeth who couldn’t say that as a child, turned it into Libby-buff and then eventually Libby – I empathise with this totally.

Biff is in fact ‘Barbara’ and Chip is ‘David’ – but he didn’t elucidate as to why they ended up with their abbreviations – so we’ll have to guess!

Now all I want to know is what are ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad”s first names (even Wikipedia can’t help with that one!!)