Feb 18, 2026 · 32 min · 11 segments
Simon Burrell always imagined he’d be a dad one day. But as the years pass, it’s something he dismisses. Simon is gay, single and approaching 50. But then, an honest conversation with a friend…
Matthew SyedHostSimon BurrellGuestAnna MachenGuestRobin HadleyGuestI remember her mum, my aunt, saying to me, oh Simon, you're going to make a great dad one day.
And it really sort of dawned on me that that was something that was just going to happen for me and probably in the not too distant future.
But it's the early nineties, and inconceivable for a gay man to become a biological dad.
UK law at the time required anybody with parental aspirations to be in a married heterosexual couple if they needed to use a fertility clinic.
The gay couple, Barry and Tony Druitt Barlow, are fighting a legal battle to bring their American-born twins back to the UK.
We've been told we're not natural, but we are.
This intimate documentary called Finding Surrogacy was first broadcast in the year 2000 on ITV.
parents.
And what it means to us both to have a family of our own after being together for 11 years.
I was driving with mum somewhere or other and she just said, you know, if you ever wanted to do that, we would support you.
I remember her mum, my aunt, saying to me, oh Simon, you're going to make a great dad one day.
And it really sort of dawned on me that that was something that was just going to happen for me and probably in the not too distant future.
But it's the early nineties, and inconceivable for a gay man to become a biological dad.
UK law at the time required anybody with parental aspirations to be in a married heterosexual couple if they needed to use a fertility clinic.
The gay couple, Barry and Tony Druitt Barlow, are fighting a legal battle to bring their American-born twins back to the UK.
We've been told we're not natural, but we are.
This intimate documentary called Finding Surrogacy was first broadcast in the year 2000 on ITV.
parents.
And what it means to us both to have a family of our own after being together for 11 years.
I was driving with mum somewhere or other and she just said, you know, if you ever wanted to do that, we would support you.
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