1. Page 16 Daily Mail, Saturday, May 23, 2015
byNatalieClarke
is their biological father because they are equal
dads to both — or, to be precise, Tony is ‘Dad’
and Barrie is ‘Daddy’.
So Saffron and Aspen are not really twins but
biological half-brother and sister. It turns out
that Aspen, though, does have an identical twin
— his brother Orlando, 11.
Confused? To explain, the fertilised embryo
from which Aspen was born separated in two in
the laboratory. One embryo was implanted into
the surrogate Rosalind Bellamy and grew to be
Aspen, while the second was frozen, then
defrosted four years later and placed in the womb
of another surrogate, a Japanese woman called
Donna. Orlando was born nine months later.
Now we come to the second set of twins, Dallas
and Jasper. Once again, Donna acted as surro-
gate, but this time the donor eggs were provided
not by Tracey McCune but another woman, a
Brazilian model whom Barrie spotted on the
catwalk and paid £35,000 for the privilege.
So Dallas and Jasper joined the growing family.
Barrie and Tony won’t divulge which of them is
B
ARRIE and Tony Drewitt-
Barlow’s property is hidden
behind tall gates at the end of
a lane in what feels like the
middle of nowhere.
Behind the garden walls, deep in
the Essex countryside, the two men have
created what they call their ‘bubble’ — a
capsule environment in which to provide their
five children with a luxurious but traditional
upbringing. A sort of Footballers’ Wives meets
the Famous Five.
There is a pool and a stable block housing
three Arab horses. A tennis court is being built
for their daughter Saffron.
These trappings of a traditional upbringing,
which the Drewitt-Barlows’ two eldest children
have chosen to talk about for the first time this
week, acts as a sort of counterbalance to
everything else about this family, which surely
most people would find utterly extraordinary.
Let us begin with the two eldest, 15-year-old
Saffron and her twin brother Aspen. They were
conceived using the donor eggs of one woman,
Tracie McCune, and carried in the womb of a
surrogate, Rosalind Bellamy.
Barrie, 46, is the father of one of them and
Tony, 50, the father of the other. They say they
have not told Saffron and Aspen which of them
the biological father of which child. And there you
have it: a family of two gay dads, five children, two
biological mothers, two surrogates.
Oh, and we mustn’t forget Colin, Barrie’s
grown-up son from a brief relationship he had
with a woman before meeting Tony 28 years ago
in their native Manchester. Barrie doesn’t want
to talk about Colin.
So, with all these children, you might think
that’s that. But no. Barrie, a curious mixture of
mother hen and gay rights zealot, is feeling
broody and wants another child to feel
‘complete’. Andrea the Brazilian model
provided 33 eggs, which presents rather
terrifying possibilities.
But Tony is against more children and the two
men are currently locked in a battle which, if
the most dominant of them eventually triumphs,
Barrie is going to win. That raises the prospect
of a sixth child or a seventh, maybe more, what
with all those eggs in storage and Barrie’s
addiction to having babies.
Then there’s the fact that the original
surrogate mother, Tracie McCune,
has donated about 15 eggs in total,
which have been used to help other
couples, so Saffron and Aspen have
numerous half-siblings scattered all
over the place. Where will it end?
I’m sitting in the conservatory of the
house with Barrie, Tony and the elder
twins, Saffron and Aspen. It’s late
evening and the three youngest
children have gone to bed.
Barrie is the outspoken one who
likes to shock, while his ‘husband’
has a gentler personality. Barrie is
volatile, Tony the peacemaker.
Saffron and Aspen — especially
Saffron — eye me with suspicion and
are evidently not pleased that I have
been permitted into the ‘bubble’ by
Dad and Daddy.
Money is clearly no object —
although even the couple’s business
dealings have been a source of
controversy. Tony runs a dermatology
business in America, while Barrie, a
man on a mission, runs the British
Surrogacy Centre, which helps gay
couples become parents.
Barrie and Tony were pioneers of a
social experiment — gay parenthood
— that 15 years later has become
accepted, though there remains
considerable opposition among more
conservative sections of society.
The purpose of this interview is — I
think — to introduce their two eldest
children to the world, to say: ‘Look
how we did!’
The twins are reserved, with Saffron
polite but mostly monosyllabic.
Presumably, as this is all she has
known, it seems normal to her? ‘Yes.’
Is one of the dads more ‘motherly’
than the other?
‘Daddy’ (Barrie), she replies.
Which one is softer?
‘Dad’ (Tony).
‘The only thing that’s different
about us,’ she explains, ‘is that Dad
and Daddy are still together. The
parents of a lot of my friends have
divorced. We’re a happy family. Daddy
always says “Gays are better parents
because they don’t have kids by acci-
dent” — and I agree.’
Tony adds: ‘Barrie and I will never
split up. We’re soulmates. But also
we’d never do that to our children
because of the pain it would cause.’
Tony admits he and Saffron fight
because they are both stubborn, and
Barrie adds that their daughter
sometimes has an ‘attitude problem’.
There have been ‘issues’ at her
private school, such as falling out
with friends.
Is this normal teenage angst or
something to do with the unconven-
tional family set-up?
Saffron insists she witnessed no
homophobia against her parents,
although they have told her they
experienced it in the early days. Her
friends have said nothing horrible —
indeed, they often come for sleep-
overs and love it because of the pool,
the ponies, Tony’s great cooking and
the relaxed atmosphere.
Saffron, it must be said, is pampered
by anyone’s standards. A chauffeur
picks her up from school each day,
and Barrie regularly sends her on
trips to Harvey Nichols in Knights-
bridge with his credit card and a
personal shopper to meet her when
she arrives.
To be fair, she is polite and doesn’t
come across as especially spoilt.
‘I do indulge my children, but why
shouldn’t I?’ says Barrie. ‘I work very
hard. Saffron says she wants to learn
how to play tennis — so she doesn’t
get a racket, she gets a tennis court.
Why not?’
With luck, Saffron will take more to
tennis than she did to horseriding,
with which she became bored after a
couple of months.
She has got so used to being taken
care of in fine style that she has no
ambitions to get a job, she says. It is
an attitude that her parents, both
grafters, disapprove of, while still
indulging her.
And Aspen? He is a serious, earnest
boy with a sensitive manner. He
admits sometimes getting a strange
reaction from others when he explains
the family set-up.
‘I have to convince them it’s true,’
he says. ‘But I find it offensive when
people says it’s not normal, because
to me the biology doesn’t matter.
‘Neither Saffron nor I feel we’ve
missed out on having a mother. Our
Dad and Daddy fulfil the maternal
and paternal roles.’
Saffron and Aspen are fond of
Tracie, their biological mum, and
Rosalind, the surrogate, whom they
see from time to time, but feel no
special connection to them.
What about the fact that Orlando is
Aspen’s identical twin? Does he feel a
‘twin connection’ with his younger
brother?
‘No, I don’t with Orlando but I do
with Saffron because we were in the
womb together.’
Aspen, who wants to be a dermatol-
ogist like Tony when he is older, has
given talks at school about his
parentage to try to counter the
negative perceptions some may
have — one of which is the idea that
children raised by gay parents will
turn out gay themselves.
Barrie and Tony are keen to dispel
this notion.
‘My parents are straight and I’m as
gay as they come,’ says Barrie, and
there’s no arguing with that.
So what about Saffron and Aspen?
Like any teenagers, they squirm a
little when their parents raise the
subject of sex.
Would you say you’re gay or straight,
Barrie asks them.
‘I’d say I’m straight,’ returns
Saffron.
‘I’d say I’m straight,’ mumbles
Aspen.
He adds: ‘One day, a lad asked if I
was going to turn out like my parents.
He meant I’d end up gay but I replied:
“What, you mean rich and
successful?”
‘I don’t let it bother me. I know my
parents received comments like that
for years.’
Neither, however, is dating and both
say they have no interest at the
moment in the opposite sex. Or if
they do, they’re not telling me in front
of Dad and Daddy.
But Saffron’s ideas about mother-
hood are definitely unconventional.
To her, surrogacy is ‘normal’, so she
says if she has a child she might go
through a surrogate. ‘I haven’t quite
decided yet, but my parents would
like me to carry a baby.’
Tony and Barrie used to employ a
nanny but now they rely on a full-time
housekeeper and Barrie’s parents, a
retired builder and his wife, who live
in a bungalow adjoining the house.
Their ‘bubble’ is deliberate, a way of
keeping the world at a distance. They
fret about security and admit being
overprotective of their children
because of the negativity they have
faced over the years.
‘I know the children are indulged,’
says Tony, the son of a shop steward
from Manchester, ‘but they have been
instilled with our values: hard work
and respect for others.’
They do seem to attract trouble,
‘Daddy always
says gays are
better parents’
‘Neither of us feel
we’ve missed out
on having a mum’
Page 17
Meet Britain’s first gay dads and
their twinsAspen and Saffron,who
say the mind-bogglingly tangled biological
web behind their birth isTOTALLYnormal
Devoted: Tony and Barrie with
their children Aspen and Saffron
Daily Mail, Saturday, May 23, 2015
though. Or maybe it’s more that
Barrie likes to provoke it. For a
time they were the notorious gay
couple with children in Britain,
their faces splashed regularly across
newspapers.
The twins were conceived using a
controversial gender-selection
technique banned in the UK, and
born in California in December
1999. An American court ruled that
Barrie and Tony could be registered
as Parent 1 and Parent 2 on the
children’s birth certificates,
making them the first gay couple
to establish legal parental rights.
Many setbacks followed, though.
They fell out with surrogate Rosalind
and egg donor Tracie for a while —
Rosalind sold her story to a Sunday
tabloid and Tracie was critical of
how spoilt the twins were — but have
now made up.
They were on the receiving end of
hostility, even death threats in the
post, and when Saffron and Aspen
were toddlers and Orlando was a
baby, they moved to Alicante in
Spain for a fresh start. But when
word got out about the two gay
dads in town, a campaign was
started, according to Barrie, to
have Saffron and Aspen removed
from their school.
Barrie remedied this problem by
buying his own school in Spain.
After a few years they returned to
Essex and enrolled Saffron and
Aspen at school.
But there were more problems
when they found the twins were
being left off party invitation lists
by local parents.
‘I had words with some of the
mothers,’ says Barrie. ‘How could
they be so hurtful?’
So Saffron and Aspen went
instead to Felsted, a private school
in Essex, where they are much
happier. ‘It’s a lovely school, like
Hogwarts,’ says Tony. ‘They both
work very hard and they have to go
to school on Saturdays.’
There was more stress for the fam-
ily when Tony, a non-smoker, was
diagnosed with throat cancer in
2006. Mercifully, his treatment was
successful.
There have been problems on the
business front, too. The couple
ran Euroderm, a clinical research
firm, but there was an issue over
the way they wound up the
business in 2008.
As a result of this, in 2010 they
were banned from holding any
directorships for eight years.
That same year, the pair were
accused of fabricating test results
for clinical trials on skincare
products, but they were acquitted
in 2011 at Southwark Crown Court.
Tony now operates his business
from America and the family have
homes in New York and Los
Angeles. They plan to buy another
home in Florida and think they
may eventually move to the U.S.
Last year, following the legalisa-
tion of gay marriage, Barrie and
Tony finally tied the knot at a
stately-home venue near Chelms-
ford. Saffron was bridesmaid.
Saffron and Aspen say they have
no inclination to leave and set up
home on their own.
To their proud parents, this is
proof that their adventure in
parenting has been a success.
And encouragement — if encour-
agement were needed — to Barrie
to take those eggs out of the deep-
freeze and do it all over again.
family
Portraitofa
21st Century