Mary: Motherhood’s better without men

TV PRESENTER Mary Portas (right), who has been married to both a man and a woman, claims that bringing up children is better with a lesbian.

‘ I have to say that sharing motherhood with a female makes it doubly wonderful,’ gushes Portas, 54, whose wife, 41-yearold fashion journalist Melanie Rickey, gave birth to their son Horatio in 2012. ‘Women are so capable — they are able to do an awful lot of things.’

Portas disclosed last month that Horatio was conceived artificially using sperm donated by her brother Lawrence Newton.

‘Melanie and I don’t even have to sit and talk about how we want to bring Horatio up,’ she adds. ‘We just agree.’

The presenter, who was David Cameron’s ‘High Street tsar’, has a teenage son, Mylo, and daughter, Verity, with her ex-husband, Unilever executive Graham Portas. She says watching Melanie bear a child has helped her empathise with fathers. ‘Not being the birth mother this time has given me a tiny bit more understanding of men,’ she says. ‘There is something extraordinarily visceral about giving birth. You are “The One”! With Horatio, I feel much more chilled and relaxed.’