Becoming a dad past retirement age isn’t miraculous, it’s just selfish
He isn’t the first and he won’t be the last. But lack of originality was clearly the least of Donald Trelford’s concerns as he commandeered acres of Sunday newsprint to boast of the arrival of his baby son, Ben. Mr Trelford is, if you please, a strapping 73 years of age and joins a motley club including Des O’Connor (a father at 72), Luciano Pavarotti (67), Clint Eastwood (67), Rupert Murdoch (72), Rod Stewart (66 — his eighth) with no shortage, I fear, to follow.
Most of them, if pushed, will put up a stout defence to justify their little miracles, and while few are blessed with Trelford’s fluency, the gist is always much the same. In his case, he says, he got his defence in early to thwart inevitable attacks, ‘mainly by female columnists’ — although if he really thought pre-emption would keep us at bay, he didn’t serve a long enough apprenticeship in print.
Thus we are assured of a hands-on fatherhood, in which — imagine! — dad manages the bottles, burps and nappies that quite passed him by with his previous, now-adult children.
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