Jon Snow: I’m perfectly comfortable with late fatherhood

The 75-year-old television veteran and his wife, Zimbabwean academic Precious Lunga, welcomed a baby boy via surrogate in March 2021 after struggling with “medical setbacks and miscarriage”.

He also has two daughters from his three-decade relationship with human rights lawyer Madeleine Colvin.

The former Channel 4 newsreader told the publication Saga Exceptional: “There are three very small people in my life – two grandchildren aged one and three and a son, Tafara, who is two and five years old.

“Getting him (Tafara) wasn’t easy but we insisted because my wife is much younger than me at 48 and she really wanted and deserved a baby.

“When he was born, life felt complete.

“I’m perfectly comfortable with late fatherhood. I don’t think I’ll drop him, I don’t feel exhausted.

“I have found that age is not relevant to my relationship with my son or grandchildren. Is grandpa different from being a father? Not really. It’s all love in the end, isn’t it?”

Snow said he was “much more relaxed and present as a parent” than his own father George, who was an Anglican minister.

“He was the Bishop of Whitby – 6ft 7in tall and even taller in full regalia,” he added.

“I’m 6ft 4″ now, but only 4ft 6” as an eight or nine year old when it really mattered.

“I found him quite scary and distant at the time, and putting him in public school didn’t bring us closer.

“The idea of ​​taking a child from the family to raise them seems crazy to me now.

“How wonderful it would have been to sit down with my dad and do my homework. I could never say, “Dad, two and two is really four?”.

“His only involvement in my education was to loudly agree with my teachers’ scathing reports because, unlike Precious, who was Cambridge educated and is the tinkerer in our relationship, I wasn’t smart in school.”

Snow said there are “many kinds of intelligence” and his was the “crude, animal kind.”

He added: “I was good at picking up signals and understanding people. I made a career out of it.

“I’m sure my drive to succeed came from wanting to prove the naysayers – especially my parents – wrong. And they were certainly wrong.”

Read the full interview on Saga Exceptional, Saga Media’s newest online platform.