He's fathered SEVEN children with surrogates. Boasted he once spent £4million on Christmas. My day with Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, the proud poster boy for gay dads ⊕

'What a tangled web we weave,' Barrie told me in 2004, talking about the twists and turns their lives had taken. Of all the many things he said, perhaps that has proved the most accurate.