One day a little girl was watching her mum make roast beef. She cut off the ends, wrapped it in string, seasoned it and set it in the roasting pan.

The little girl asked her mum why she cut off the ends of the roast. The mum replied, after some thought, that it was the way that her mother had done it.

That night the grandma came to dinner and the little girl and her mum went to her and asked why she had cut the end off of the roast before cooking. After some thought grandma replied, that was the way her mother had done it.

Now great grandmother was quite old and in a nursing home. But the little girl went with her mum and grandma to see her and again asked the question.

The great grandmother looked at them a bit annoyed and said: “So it would fit in the pan, of course.”