Now that almost 60 years have passed since the pioneering works of J.G. Oldroyd it seems appropriate as an homage to consider here constitutive equations that can be viewed as generalisations of the by now classical Oldroyd-B model. In this short communication we shall address heuristically the theme of differential constitutive models and will provide an alternative way of deriving a "modified FENE" equation (FENE-M) and inter-relating the PTT and FENE-P-like models. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.