Weekend Woman's Hour: Jonathan Meijer interviewed on fathering over 550 babies by sperm donation, Gabby Logan, Lisa Jewell

Published: July 6, 2024, 4 p.m.

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A new series was released this week on Netflix. It is called Man with 1,000 Kids, and Netflix is billing it as the true story of Jonathan Meijer, a man accused of travelling the world, deceiving women into having his babies - via sperm donation - on a mass scale. Nuala McGovern talks to Jonathan Meijer, the sperm donor, to mums Natalie and Suzanne, who had a baby conceived with Jonathan\\u2019s donor sperm, to Natalie Hill, the executive producer who pitched the original idea for these films to Netflix and to Rachel Cutting, director of compliance and information at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the UK\\u2019s independent regulator of fertility treatment.

Gabby Logan joins Krupa Padhy to talk about her new book The Midpoint Plan. She\\u2019s challenging the stereotype of middle age. With fewer insecurities, children leaving home and perhaps a bit more money in the bank, she believes we should see it as the best point in our lives. Plus, if we look after ourselves in midlife, we\\u2019ll be happier in old age.

Summer is here, which means it's wedding season, and brides-to-be across the country are asking themselves the eternal question: what do I wear for the occasion? Kathryn Wheeler, who married earlier this year, decided to do something that old superstitions advice against: make her own wedding dress. In the process, she learned much more than just sewing skills. She also learned a life lesson, to embrace imperfections.

It\\u2019s 25 year since the New York Times\\u2019 best-selling author Lisa Jewell published her first novel, Ralph\\u2019s Party. Since then she\\u2019s written another twenty-one novels, and more recently a number of dark psychological thrillers, including Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs and the award winning None of This is True. She joins Krupa Padhy to discuss her latest work \\u2013 Breaking the Dark \\u2013 which is a Jessica Jones Marvel crime novel, exploring the world of the private detective and former superhero.

By the time she was 19, Michelle De Swarte had gone from a council estate in London to the catwalks of Manhattan. Her twenties were a swirl of parties and high end glamour but by her thirties she was broke and in need - as she once put it - of a \\u201cnew personality\\u201d. Desperate to find a way out of fashion, she reinvented herself as a stand-up comedian. Michelle De Swarte joins Nuala to talk about putting some of her own experiences into a new BBC comedy, Spent.

Presenter: Krupa Padhy\\nProducer: Annette Wells\\nEditor: Rebecca Myatt

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