Our beloved Harry Kane, leader of the line for the one and only Tottenham Hotspur, captain of this fine nation’s almost best ever national football team and man of all (Premiership) seasons, has faced some tough scrapes in his life. He played for Millwall FFS where just arriving at the car park is a trauma. He’s been kicked, bitten, butted, punched, studded, all manner of horrible shit that are the knocks of top-flight football. But nothing could have prepared him for the shit-storm that has followed him after the birth of his baby this week.

Harry tweeted that he was ‘so proud of his wife for delivering a lovely baby with no anaesthetic’.

Oh dear. You can be proud of your new baby (or grand-baby), you can be proud of your wife for the almost inhuman trauma that is ironically the most humanly thing ever in delivering a baby. But you simply CANNOT be proud that she used no anaesthetic. Because that implies, according to lots and lots of women, that those who may have had some degree of medication during their own childbirthing, are somehow inferior.

And this was not just the usual feminazis, my own daughter voiced concern when she saw Harry’s tweet. Because when she delivered the world’s most perfect baby, it was far from the perfect birth. Never mind anaesthetic, there were nine consultants, fifteen other doctors, 6 midwives, 26 nurses and 3 delivery guys from Dominos. And not all were gathered because they knew that ‘the next messiah’ was about to be born. No. They were there because my daughter was in big trouble and needed serious help (God bless NHS teaching hospitals). Did that make anyone less proud of her? No, probably the opposite. Yet that’s not the point.

But this was Harry Kane. Not Boris Johnson, not me, not anyone with a great facility with the written word. Or, let’s be frank, a wonderful understanding of the world. So I reckon what Harry meant was: ‘so proud of my wife, delivered a lovely baby; oh, and she didn’t even have any meds’. You can read any sentence 15 different ways. Unless its written by Boris, obviously. Harry probably went to some NCT classes which tell you again and again how children born unaided (regardless of how much suffering and near-death experience the mother might encounter) will be ‘better’ than those born ‘less naturally’. And thus thought it might resonate to include the ‘anaesthetic’ bit. Who knows?

All I know is, Harry Kane is as qualified as any man to comment on the intricacies of childbirth (unless that man is an obstetrician). He’s a footballer, FFS. To attack him (2 hour feminist radio program last night about just that) is grossly unfair. To do so when he’s trying to enjoy the wonders of new baby time is worse. But to do so just when the new football season is starting is totally unforgivable. Must have been Arsenal women on the radio.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx