Mary Portas opens up about brother fathering son with her partner
The TV presenter has opened up about using her brother to father her surrogate child and why she feels it is her duty to be honest and open about her family life.
Mary Portas believes she has a “social responsibility” as a gay woman to speak honestly about her personal life in, as she hopes to “normalise” what could be considered an “unusual situation”.
The star – who is married to fashion journalist Melanie Rickey – made the comments whilst discussing subject of surrogacy, and the fact that the pair’s youngest son was fathered by Portas’ brother.
Speaking about why she wants to discuss the topic more openly, she explained: “I’m a gay woman and I have some sort of social responsibility to people who still feel they haven’t a voice.
“I just happen to live with another woman and she had a child who happens to be from my brother,” she told Good Housekeeping magazine.
“The more I am able to normalise that the better the world is going to be.”
The Queen Of Shops welcomed son Horatio in 2012 after he was conceived using IVF – and although she had previously stated he was conceived through an anonymous sperm donor, she later revealed in February that it was actually her brother – Lawrence Newton – who had helped conceive the boy.
In her memoir, Portas explains that she felt that Ms Rickey, being younger, should be the birth mother and they would ask Lawrence if he would donate sperm – to which replied “I’d be honoured”.
“Lawrence was the first one there [with us] and he picked him up and it was just very emotional,” she told The Times of her son’s birth.
“I said to him ‘Thank you’, and he said ‘It’s my pleasure’, and we just held each other. And now, when I look at Horatio, he is a complete mix of [Ms Rickey] and me.”
“Of course, now I know that it could only ever have been Lawrence who was Horatio’s father,” she said.
Portas – who has two children with her ex-husband Graham – entered into a civil partnership with Ms Rickey in 2010 and were among the first couples to convert their civil partnership to a marriage last December.
