Of course, he didn't say that quite as often as he used to say, "If you and your sister don't stop fighting over those Smurfs, I'm going to stop the car and you can get out and walk." If I'd been smart I would've instantaneously pegged Painter Smurf at my sister's head - my parents drove an orange Leyland P76 and I lost a lot of credibility in 1988 being seen in the back seat.

But my father was right. There's always more to people than meets the eye.

Most of us - you, me, the Olson twins - have a few guilty pleasures that we indulge in behind closed doors. We listen to REO Speedwagon. We watch Dancing With The Stars (but only because it's the television equivalent of a car crash). We get on the Internet and Google our own name. Repeatedly.

And, apparently, we dance around to a song about spaghetti bolognaise in the privacy of our own home. That's right. Word on the street is that some of us are "suburban moshing" to a song about spag bol. How do I know? Because the man who wrote the song told me.

Peter Combe is one of Australia's most successful children's entertainers. In the 1980s, before Hi-5 grapevined their way on to TV, before the Wiggles skivvied-up, Combe was dazzling children around Australia with songs like Spaghetti Bolognaise, Toffee Apple, Newspaper Mama and Wash Your Face With Orange Juice. By 1987 he was the first person to produce a full-length video clip for kids and he went on to rack up 750,000 album sales and win three ARIA Awards.

But a strange thing has been happening. Despite the fact that Combe's Generation Y fans are all grown up, they've started booking him for their 18th and 21st birthday parties. When it comes to getting jiggy with Generation Y, P-Co is the new J-Lo.

"When I get up and perform my old song, they crowd around and start singing, clapping, dancing and even crowd-surfing," says Combe, who is both baffled and delighted by his renewed popularity. "About a month ago I got booked for a 21st birthday in Brisbane and spent the evening sailing up and down the Brisbane River on a cruise boat singing my old hits to the kids."

So it will be a pleasant surprise for the original Spag Bol groupies to know that Combe has a new CD out: Hand in Hand. It's a children's CD designed to raise money for children on the other side of the world.

Last year, Combe approached War Child Australia with plans to put together a CD featuring Australia's leading children's entertainers, as a way to raise fund to help children affected by the war in Iraq. That CD, Hand in Hand, is released this week and features songs by a range of artists including Hi-5, Nikki Webster, The Saddle Club, Noni Hazelhurst, The Seekers, John Farnham, Christine Anu and Combe.

"Every time I saw images on television of the children in Iraq, I just wanted to do something to help them. This CD is not about religion or politics, it's purely about offering aid to those kids," Combe says.

War Child, an international aid agency dedicated to providing immediate, effective and sustainable aid to children affected by war, started operations in Iraq as soon as was possible after last year's war.