A shallow insight into donor dads and the dangers of social media
The most destructive technology on earth is not the atom bomb — it’s Facebook. Only social media can have the power to vapourise all signs of human intelligence at the touch of a button.
how else to explain the astonishing stupidity of women who decide to get pregnant by artificial insemination, using sperm donated by strangers who offer their services via the internet?
Four Men, 174 Babies: Britain’s Super Sperm Donors (C4) displayed about as much insight and intelligence as the would- be mothers it interviewed . . . and at least they had the excuse that they were desperate for babies.
It delivered no analysis, offered no debate and, except for a couple of ten- second comments by a ‘fertility lawyer’, brooked not one word of criticism.
The camera simply followed Clive, a 61-year-old white van man from Yorkshire who claimed to be a retired teacher.
Clive advertised his wares on Facebook, and was happy to drive up to 80 miles to park outside a woman’s house, and prepare to hand over a syringeful, before heading home.
he asked for no payment, except a text to announce each pregnancy and a photo of each baby. Clive was married, but didn’t tell his wife what he was doing at first — she thought he was going to British National Party meetings.
Most of the women who called on Clive’s services were in same-sex relationships. It’s hard to imagine that many lesbians long to have a baby with a BNP activist.
But perhaps I’m wrong and, when Junior is grown and spraying racist grafitti across cornershop windows, they’ll sigh: ‘Ahh, he takes after his dad.’
We’ll never know, because director Tom Pursey didn’t ask the mothers what qualities they wanted from the father’s side. They didn’t seem to care, so long as the sperm was free.
True, it costs £1,200 to visit a properly regulated fertility clinic . . . but surely that’s insignificant, compared to the average £250,000 it costs over 18 years to raise one child.
Worse, Clive and the other men who shared his hobby provided the flimsiest assurances of good health. All of the donors were secretive, and two insisted on keeping their identities hidden, one wearing a ludicrous wig. ‘My wife would be aghast if she knew what I was doing,’ he said.
This man has 54 children, with nine more on the way. even if he were a one-eyed dwarf, he added, he’d want to keep spreading his seed. Should you wish to have a baby with this charmer, ladies, you’ll find him on Facebook.
A more shallow documentary is hard to imagine. The subjects in Grammar Schools: Who Will Get In? (BBC2) were much more appealing but sadly this hourlong show, the first of three, lacked real depth, too.
We met half a dozen ten-yearolds in Bexley, London, preparing for their 11-plus exam and hoping to go to the local grammar school, Townley. The programme makers had already decided that selective education was a Bad Thing, and the programme was clumsily weighted to prove it.
Most of the featured children did not pass. Those who did, the voiceover told us, kept quiet about it, as if awkwardly ashamed. I find that very hard to believe — it’s the biased perspective of a Leftie documentary that would prefer to see all children fail than have only some succeed.
The show ended with a primary school head lamenting that her children had to be put through this ordeal. Maybe next week’s episode will offer more balance, but don’t hold your breath.