When I was a lad, role models were fairly easy to identify – Kenny Dalglish, Steve Austin the Six Million Dollar Man, Jon and Ponch from CHiPS and Arthur Scargill. Being a small boy, I wasn’t too concerned with who girls looked up to, but I suppose they included Minnie the Minx, Toyah and Sue-Ellen off Dallas.

Life was simpler in those days. If you could kick a ball, sing a song, lift a car above your head in slow-motion and fight to stop the pits being shut down, then you could add “hero” to your CV.

I sort of thought it would be the same forever, but if my kids are anything to go by, a new breed of celebrity has emerged and a whole new set of aspirations for them to work towards.

Both the son and the daughter think the world of a chap who goes by the name Stampylongnose. He used to call himself Stampylonghead but for reasons I haven’t had the energy to divine, he changed. What does Stampylongnose do to attract such pre-teen adulation?

Why, he plays video games. Then he makes videos of himself playing games and uploads them to YouTube. As a consequence, he has more internet cachet than the combined powers of Justin Bieber, One Direction and Arthur Scargill.

My kids will sit there rapt and often laughing their heads off as Stampy – and his sometime compadre iBallisticSquid, who has an accent that strongly suggests he’s from not a million miles away from here – talk their way through half an hour of them playing games, usually Minecraft.

For anyone over the age of 30 or who doesn’t have kids, Minecraft is essentially Lego on a screen but with giant spiders, arrow-shooting skeletons and zombie pigmen.

Stampy is apparently a professional games player now – his videos attract so many hits that he’s been able to monetise his hobby and people pay him money to advertise on his YouTube channel. It is, in effect, his job.

The son has just dipped a tentative toe into these waters by setting up his very own YouTube channel on which he plans to post instructional videos on Minecraft in the style of Stampylongnose. Watching the kids play Minecraft is quite hypnotic... as day turns to night and the zombies come out, they can be seen wielding their diamond pick-axes and digging down through the blocky earth to find seams of coal. Not sure what Scargill would make of it all.

Stampy’s videos are a joyful affair, produced with the zest of someone who knows he’s making a packet doing something he enjoys. I have watched them, of course, in a bid to ensure they are safe in cyberspace. It also helps keep me young-at-heart, being down with the kids in this way.

“So,” I said this week, hoping to improve my internet savvy. “What’s the story behind the name Stampylongnose?”

My daughter looks witheringly at me. “Because he’s got a long nose.”