Anthony Fletcher - Sperm Donor in Scotland

On Saturday night I recorded an interview about my experiences as a sperm donor for the Stephen Nolan show on BBC Radio 5 Live, and it was broadcast a few hours ago.  It can be listened to on catch-up at this link from about 39 minutes onwards.  (I don't really sound like Darth Vader's sinister Scottish cousin, by the way - they heavily disguised my voice at my own request, just in case anyone I know in real life happened to be casually listening in.)  I think Stephen Nolan felt at a few points that I was becoming unreasonably impatient with him - he kept saying "this is not an aggressive interview!", although to a hardened political interrogator such as himself, a non-aggressive interview is probably just one from which the interviewee emerges alive.  Oddly enough, the question that slightly exasperated me was completely left-field - it wasn't about the ethics of natural insemination, or the risk of accidental incest, or any of the other all-too-familiar objecti...

Today, for the first and last time in my life, I bought a copy of the Daily Record. It certainly wasn't the umpteenth hysterical front page headline about the Alex Salmond "scandal" that made the purchase irresistible, but instead something printed in much smaller lettering at the foot of the front page. "IPSO upholds sperm donor complaint against the Daily Record - See Page 2." That was a reference to a complaint against the Record that I submitted to the press regulator IPSO some four-and-a-half months ago. It's relatively rare for IPSO to uphold a complaint, and very, very rare for them to force a publication to make a front page reference to an adjudication, which gives you some idea of the seriousness of the Record's transgression. There has been a lot of pious talk as the Salmond story has unfolded about Record journalists "just doing their job" in a democratic society, but in case anyone is tempted to give them the benefit of the ...