The former Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow has said he is “at complete ease” with becoming a father again in his 70s.
The broadcaster, 75, and his wife, the academic Precious Lunga, 48, welcomed a baby boy via a surrogate in March 2021 after struggling with “medical setbacks and miscarriages”.
Speaking to the Saga Exceptional publication, Snow said: “There are three very small people in my life – two grandsons, aged one and three, and a son, Tafara, who is two going on five.
“Having him was not easy but we persisted because, at 48, my wife is a good deal younger than me, and she very much wanted and deserved a baby.”
He added: “When he was born, life felt complete.
“I’m at complete ease with late fatherhood. I don’t feel I’ll drop him, I don’t feel exhausted.
“I haven’t found age relevant to my relationship with my son or grandsons. Is being a grandad different to being a dad? Not really. In the end, it’s all love, isn’t it?”
Speaking about his parenting style, Snow said he was “much more relaxed and present as a parent” in comparison with his own father, who was an Anglican clergyman.
Speaking of his father, he said: “He was the bishop of Whitby – 6ft 7in tall and even taller in full regalia.
“I’m 6ft 4in now, but only 4ft 6in as an eight- or nine-year-old child, when it really mattered. I found him pretty scary and remote at that time, and my being sent to public school didn’t bring us any closer.
“The idea of taking a child out of the family to educate them strikes me now as bonkers. How wonderful it might have been to sit down to do homework with my father. Never once was I able to say, ‘Dad, two and two are really four?’
“His only involvement in my education was to loudly agree with the damning reports from my teachers because, unlike Precious, who is Cambridge-educated and the boffin in our relationship, I wasn’t bright at school.”
He also has two daughters from his three-decade relationship with the human rights lawyer Madeleine Colvin.
