It is a complete honour to be made a World Childless Week Champion, something I will always treasure. It will inspire me to keep tapping that great big pronatalist world on the shoulder to let them know our unique story.

I spent my midlife years trying to find the right person and to have children – without success. In my fifties I realised that ‘childless not by choice’ summed up my situation. Through wonderful support groups I connected with men and women whose experience matched mine. Only then did I grieve and feel free to express the regret that I hadn’t become the father I longed to be.

Coming from a journalism background, I wanted to write about this unexpected turnaround in my life, particularly as the male perspective was hardly ever heard. I wrote a play called Empty but, being unsure about it, kept it hidden.

Then came the book, I Always Wanted To Be A Dad: Men without Children, which was a collaboration with other childless people. Much to my surprise, it attracted media attention. I was interviewed on TV and radio, in the national and local press, magazines, podcasts and websites, gave talks about it and performed a monologue in an Islington pub. While others did amazing work helping the childless come to terms with their predicament on an individual basis, I realised my role was to ‘go public’. I returned to Empty, revised it and, happily, it received its first full performance at London’s Cockpit Theatre in September. Now, in what should be my retirement, I am as busy as ever writing about an issue that needs all the attention it can get.

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