TV Presenter Drops Jaw-Dropper: Her Brother’s Not Just Family – He’s the REAL Dad, and Astrology Warned Us This Was Gonna Get Messy!
Added on December 12, 2025 inCelebrity News Cards
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Ever wonder how family ties can take on a whole new meaning when you mix a pinch of modern love with a dash of old-school blood bonds? TV presenter Mary Portas, best known for shaking up the retail world on Mary, Queen of Shops, revealed some fascinating family dynamics that might just make your head spin a little. When she and her now ex-wife Melanie Rickey decided to have another child, Mary wanted to ensure the kiddo shared a “bloodline” with her other children—so guess who she turned to? Her brother Lawrence, who generously became the biological father without any sitcom-style awkwardness. It’s as if the cosmos aligned perfectly for this unconventional family constellation, reminding us that sometimes the stars—and siblings—have a bigger role in our stories than we expect. Curious about how this heartfelt decision unfolded and what it meant for their family? LEARN MORE.
TV presenter Mary Portas explained why she chose her brother Lawrence to be the biological father of her child with her now ex-wife Melanie Rickey.
The couple were one of the first civil partnerships to tie the knot after same-sex marriage was made legal in the UK in 2014, and they’d already had a son together, Horatio, whose biological father was Portas’ brother.
Portas, 65, had presented the Mary, Queen of Shops series and worked on various other productions which were focused on the world of retail.
Speaking to Jamie Laing on the Great Company podcast, Portas explained that when she sat down with her wife to figure out who the biological father of their child was going to be, she wanted a ‘bloodline’.
She also wanted their child to be related to her other children, Mylo and Verity, from her first marriage to Graham Portas.
She wanted her son to be related to her other children (YouTube/GreatCompanyPodcast)
“Did he come round and s**g my ex-wife? No,” the TV presenter explained.
“So, Mel decided she wanted a child, and I was very clear that I wanted to have a bloodline. If I was going to have another child, I wanted to make sure that it was related in some way and biologically related to my other kids.”
She also said she had a ‘particular bond’ with her brother Lawrence and knew he ‘didn’t particularly want to have children’, so she asked him to be their sperm donor for a child Rickey would carry.
Explaining that her brother ‘looked after me’, she said that he told her he’d ‘done it sis’ after donating sperm and that as a result her son Horatio looks very much like her side of the family.
Mary Portas presented a number of TV shows (Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Horatio was born in 2012, so he’s grown up a bit and talks to his uncle about football, which his mum finds ‘boring’, but she emotionally recounted how she felt when she saw her brother hold him for the first time.
“The most beautiful time is when he came into the world, and I rang Lawrence, and Lawrence turned up and picked him up,” she told Laing’s podcast.
“And it was like, it was his gift to me. God, I get emotional. It was his gift, and it was the greatest gift.”
She said that it was such a gift ‘because of the years that we helped each other’ and that after all of it, ‘I was always his big sis, and then he was able to give me this gift’.
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