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Spunk

Tony Horne gives us his thoughts on a Danish sperm bank's decision to ban gingers.

By Tony Horne

26 Sep 2011, 12:30

Suddenly someone at 5 Live was looking at my profile on Linkedin. I’ve never really understood the whole Linkedin thing – weren’t there enough ways to connect now anyway? But this was good, why was someone at 5 Live looking me up? Then the phone rang. It was Michael - apparently we had met in 2001. I vaguely remembered.

‘Are you still ginger?’ he asked.
‘Well, to avoid being ginger I don’t tend to wear much hair anymore,’ I replied.
‘Would you like to come on the Tony Livesey programme to discuss being ginger? You’ll be on with Kat Brown from The Times, can you get here for midnight?’ Michael continued.
I paused for a second and thought “well, why not?”

I hadn’t been on the radio for eleven weeks and wasn’t sure I would ever broadcast again, but I must admit, I was mildly amused. This was the story which I’ve since seen cropping up on the odd chat show here and there.  A Danish sperm bank didn’t want any more gingers to lob their wad into a tube anymore. Nobody wanted ginger kids. I was nervous driving into Manchester. Freshers were out falling over in the streets; I was normally in bed by this time, but I thought that if someone asks you to go on national radio, you don’t turn them down. I particularly enjoyed parking under the building in Mark Radcliffe’s parking space. Yes, really, a space with his name on a plaque!

Even minutes before I went on, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make a complete tit of myself or indeed if I was going to be dropped from the running order. Tony Livesey hadn’t mentioned the item, and frankly, Lembit Opik nearly singing at the Lib Dems conference and two Arsenal fans shouting at each other and spelling out the word c-u-n-t seemed better value. But then I was on and loving it, even accidently throwing a curveball at the end making Tony ridiculously late for the news. I’d forgotten my own radio disciplines being the other side of the mic as I asked him to name me ten influential gingers in the world. I offered Chris Evans and Anne of Green Gables, but forgot Prince Harry and Mick Hucknall.

We hardly discussed the sperm bank element at all but I agreed with the Danes totally, despite having a ginger gene, which I had always hated. I hadn’t been bullied at school but I always felt ginger so it would sit on your shoulder burdening you with insecurities regardless of whether anyone called you ginger bollocks or not. Wasn’t this, though, supply and demand? If a sperm bank decided that there was no hole in the market for gingers, wasn’t that its right to do so? Every company has a business plan, and if that part of the brand wasn’t selling then why stock it? It made perfect sense to me.

Of course, if the Danish bank had asked for no more “contributions” from a colour truly associated with a race, can you imagine the fuss? Danish sperm bank says no more Asians...oh well, what an eruption that would cause, but gingers....hey, that’s no problem. That’s a source of comedy. Afterwards, the producer thanked me and said he would use me again. I went back on Linkedin and looked up my fellow ginger Kat to discover  that she had been at the University of Durham (my patch for many years) and had studied French and Italian (my degree). We clearly were destined to meet. On the way home I reflected on how surreal but fun the whole experience had been. I enjoyed myself immensely.

I wondered if they really would ever call again. I’ve built databases myself over the years of people whom you can call on at a moment’s notice to comment on various stories yet conversely had often been unsure of how to get on the lists myself. Was I now sitting on a BBC laptop in a special section all by itself?