As eyebrows were raised over Charles Dance becoming a dad again at 65, a fellow oldie defends his situation saying: 'My baby boy's lucky to have a 73-year-old father'

By Donald Trelford

Last updated at 12:30 AM on 28th November 2011

My youngest son Ben was christened recently  at St Bride’s, the Fleet Street church where his half-sister Laura was also named 31 years ago.

My other children were there, too — Sally, 46, Tim, 45, and Paul, 42, — as well as my four grandchildren.

It was a joyous family occasion. One of my grandchildren, ten-year-old Freddie, had sent a letter to his newborn uncle that started: ‘Dear Ben, hope the birth went well.’

Doting dad: Donald Trelford with his new son Ben. He said he has a new spring in his step since his son was born

The generational confusion is something we have all had to get used to, as I’m sure Charles Dance will find when his baby is born early next year, 36 years after his first child arrived. Understanding their family tree is hard enough for children nowadays, with an increasing number of parents having had more than one spouse.

Fitting in stepbrothers and stepsisters, not to mention nieces and nephews who are older than you, can be hard to get your head around, which is why we have put photographs of his whole network of relations over Ben’s cot so that he can gradually work it all out as he gets older.

At 65, Charles Dance is eight years younger than I was when Ben was born, though he has said: ‘I feel 35. I behave 25.’

I can’t plausibly make such claims to youthfulness, though I’m told I look younger than my age and have never really felt grown-up.

I have certainly felt a new spring in my step since Ben came along — which is just as well really, since I had forgotten how demanding a new baby can be. The 24/7 attention span is quite daunting, though it helps that older people need less sleep and usually get up once or twice in the night for a loo trip anyway.

Friends who had said at the outset: ‘How will you be able to cope at your age?’ now know the answer. I am better equipped than I ever was before, mainly because I have more time, but also because I have a more mature sense of values.

Father figure: Charles Dance and fiancee Eleanor Boorman. Their baby is due early next year, 36 years after his first child was born

Once they had got over their initial shock, friends of my own age, whose children have mostly grown up and gone away, have taken to Ben warmly, reviving prized but long-lost memories of holding their own babies in their arms. I say I had ‘forgotten’ the demands a new baby makes on parents. The truth is that I never really knew.

At the time my older children were born, it was traditional for fathers to play a more distant part in the rearing of their offspring. It was something mothers got on with while their husbands got on with their job. That may sound crude, but it was the way things were.

I was working my way up a career  ladder, leaving home early and getting back late, hardly seeing the children except at weekends.

Now things are very different. The fact that the experiences are all so new to me — buying toys, choosing baby clothes, watching him learn to crawl or take his first steps, pushing a buggy along the beach at 7am and so on — makes them all the more enjoyable and helps to keep me young.

My wife Claire and I are lucky to live in a converted farm on the side of a mountain in Majorca, with a big garden and grounds, including an orchard of fruit trees and plenty of hideaways where a boy can play.

We have wonderful weather and wonderful views. I work as much as I want to, mostly writing in my study off the sitting room, to which I can be summoned at a moment’s notice for feeding or playing with Ben.

Sir David Jason and his wife Gill Hinchliffe with their baby daughter Sophie May at their home in Buckinghamshire in February

Claire, who is 25 years younger than me, gave up a life in broadcasting to move out here. We have been together for 14 years. She hadn’t been married before or had a child, which made her feel she was missing out on an important part of life.

It would obviously have been better for us to have had the baby earlier, when we were both younger, but it didn’t happen.

Ben wasn’t an accident. He was the result of many years of trying, first in London, then in Spain.

Our experience of fertility treatment in London was dispiriting. We were made to feel pessimistic about the outcome at every stage and didn’t believe the medical staff really cared one way or the other. In Spain it was the opposite. They were constantly optimistic, made us feel hopeful and were genuinely thrilled when it worked.

We knew there was a risk of abnormalities in the baby at our respective ages, but we took the best advice and were comforted by the rapid advances in scanning technology in the decades since I had last attended a pregnancy clinic. The doctors thought it was more of a miracle for Claire to conceive at 48 than for me to be a father at 73.

Charles Dance is in a similar situation to ours, in as much as he has grown-up children, his fianc?e is 26 years his junior and she has never had a child.

Having a baby in these circumstances, when the father is old and may not live to see the child grow up, is bound to attract some critical comment. I suffered it myself when Ben was born.

I can understand that it can upset some people, disturbing their sense of the natural order of things, but I cannot understand the venom with which it is sometimes expressed.

Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster in February just days before Penny gave birth to their second son Aiden

Claire and I weren’t advocating aged parenthood for other people or promoting it as a preferable lifestyle choice. If my wife wanted a baby, her only child, and was in a position to look after it, I didn’t see that it was anyone else’s business. I expect Mr Dance feels the same.

When Ben was born, I was the same age as Charlie Chaplin was when he had his last child, slightly older than Picasso and Pavarotti but eight years younger than film star Anthony Quinn.

Entertainers and journalists seem to lead the field these days in aged fatherhood: David Jason, Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, John Simpson, Don McCullin, John Humphrys, Alexander Chancellor, Charles Glass, to name some fairly recent visitors to the maternity ward.

It occurs to me, though, that this might be because they get more publicity because they are better known, and that what we are witnessing is a wider phenomenon of ageing fathers in society at large.

If so, the reasons are not hard to find. Life expectancy for men, both in Britain and the United States, has increased dramatically in the past half-century. So have divorces and the incidence of older men marrying and having children with much younger women.

One baby in ten is now born to a man over 45 in Britain. Meanwhile, fatherhood under 30 has fallen sharply. As advertisements for surfing, skiing and other adventure holidays constantly proclaim, being 60 or even 70 isn’t what it was.

And the fact that fathers are getting older may not necessarily be bad for children, according to the pressure group Fathers Direct.

‘Old fathers are three times more likely to take regular responsibility for a young child,’ says Jack O’Sullivan, co-founder of the group. ‘They are more likely to be fathers by choice, and this means they become more positively involved with the child.’

They may also — and I speak from personal experience here — have learned from past mistakes.

A baby is a joy, an affirmation of life — and in our case a bit of a miracle. We know how lucky we are. Only once so far have I been mistaken for Ben’s grandfather, but I have noticed other people wondering about it.

Of course, it troubles me that I may not be nimble enough to play football with Ben without the risk of a torn muscle or a hernia, but I shall do my creaky best.

I certainly won’t be able to enjoy the exceptionally long relationship I had with my own father that lasted all of 64 years, but many children are brought up in single households and go on to lead happy and successful lives.

I hope to make up for the inevitably short time I may be destined to have with my son in the quality of our relationship.

He will always have my full attention, which my other children, sadly, didn’t have. I can only pray that I live long enough for him not just to remember me, but to remember me fondly.