The Surrogates
Caroline Flack: Her Life And Death
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Not so long ago, your greatest worry at a suburban carvery pub was soggy chips with your chicken-in-a-basket and a wedge of black forest gateau that was only half defrosted.
Then, if the evening was going really badly, somebody would box you in with their Vauxhall Viva in the car park.
But in recent years, you’d be lucky to escape without being dragged into a threesome with a couple from Redditch, or getting signed up to a sperm-and-egg donor website.
Channel 4 ran a documentary last year on swingers clubs, which seem to favour carveries as venues for a get-together before the hanky-panky begins.
And now, as teacher for the deaf David, 40, discovered last night in his search to find a woman to have his baby in The Surrogates (BBC1), carveries are also the place where women with an available womb like to congregate, to interview potential parents.
Now, as teacher for the deaf David, 40, discovered last night in his search to find a woman to have his baby in The Surrogates (BBC1), carveries are also the place where women with an available womb like to congregate, to interview potential parents
Perhaps it’s something to do with the decor. After all, swinging and surrogacy don’t seem so strange in a room with horse brasses hanging on the walls.
Single and gay, David was desperate to meet a woman prepared to bear a child for him. But surrogates can pick and choose, and David was struggling with his small talk — eager to seem friendly without being needy or boring. It was, he said, like speed-dating without the promise of romance.
The first of a three-part series and filmed over 18 months, this was a detailed and absorbing probe into the world of surrogacy. Britain is one of the few countries in Europe where women can legally carry a baby for somebody else, by arrangement — but not for a fee. Expenses are allowable, payment is not.
On the island of Alderney, Caitlin, 26, was hoping to carry a child for her boss Kate and her husband. Kate, 35, had suffered a termination, a stillbirth and a miscarriage, and couldn’t face pregnancy again. She said she wanted a surrogate with a ‘young, fleshy womb’… and she found one in her own office.
And then there was Emma, 23, who gave birth in front of the cameras, on her knees in her living room with her face buried in the sofa cushions. We watched as the baby emerged.
All of it was filmed with such a matter-of-fact absence of privacy, it was a little like watching an antelope being born in a nature documentary.
Caroline Flack, the Love Island presenter who took her own life last year, was obsessed with social media. Her grieving mother, speaking on Caroline Flack: Her Life And Death (C4), said it was almost impossible to get her daughter to look up from her smartphone
Emma met gay couple Kevin and Aki through a surrogacy app. ‘It’s kind of like Tinder,’ she said, referring to the social media dating app used by millions.
And to think, tinder was the stuff that landladies used to get the fire blazing in the hearth at carveries. Try explaining that to anyone under 30.
Under-30s often cannot remember a life without social media. It’s a phenomenon that has risen so quickly that half the country has barely clocked its existence, while the other half seems ruled by it.
Caroline Flack, the Love Island presenter who took her own life last year, was obsessed with social media. Her grieving mother, speaking on Caroline Flack: Her Life And Death (C4), said it was almost impossible to get her daughter to look up from her smartphone.
Friend and colleague Dermot O’Leary said ‘she hated it but couldn’t live without it, without affirmation’ — the ‘likes’ and vapid praise of followers on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
The portrait emerged of a woman incapable of separating real life from the celebrity world. ‘She was feeling things so much more deeply than I would have done in the same situation,’ said one friend. It was all horribly messy — and bitterly sad.