Pundit's wife just gave birth and he's staying for the end of the match....

[PosieComeHereMyPreciousParker]

John Barnes is commenting on the Chelsea/Liverpool game and has just announced whilst one air his wife has given birth, when asked is he off now he said "No, I'll stay until the end as we're 2-0 down" or similar.

Am I unreasonable to think he's a bit of a dick?

When I was a medical student, I was sat in clinicwith a consultant and half way through seeing a patient, his phone rang, he answer it, "lovely, lovely, yes, thanks for calling" and hung up. Continued to see the patient.
The patient left, he had a 5 minute chat with me about her case, then a nurse came in with the next set of notes, consultant said "during the last patient, the labour ward just rang, I'm a father again" then he asked her to show in the next patient, finished the clinic and did a ward round. Didn't mention it again.

He was wierd though!!

@ pennydreadful

My DH wasn't there for our first son's birth. He stayed at home and worked and came to the hospital once he was born. He is a fabulous father.

We have no idea what the pre-arrangements between the Barnes' are, but it may be that if he is freelance, for eg, he won't get paid if he isn't there, and as he's from the era when footballers were not paid £100k a week, they might need the money, with 7 kids.

I think it's actually none of our business.

Seems he is utterly disinterested in his wife and baby. Or maybe he is one of these tossers who can't bear to see his wife's fanjo giving birth in case it puts him off fucking it. Either way he is a dick, I agree.

Dh wasn't there for ds's birth, as we had no one to look after dd at that time of the night.
So I went to hospital on my own in a taxi (never seen a driver look so worried) and ds was born 2 hours later.
Dh arrived at 8am, ds all clean and lovely, I was having brekkie.
He was useless at dd's birth (which did go on for hours) and tbh it didn't bother me at all that he wasn't there for ds.

@ pennydreadful

Or maybe he said;

"I come from Jamaica,
my name is John Bar-nes
When I do my thing
the crowd go bananas"

Partly depends where she is - if it's going to take him 4 hours to get there, or there won't be another train for two hours then he might well think that another 30 minutes finishing off his job will make no odds.

Look, it's Barnes' 7th child, the novelty has probably worn off by now.

Besides, it's so rare that the Kop gits Liverpool get to beat Chelsea that he will probably never get the chance to witness such a tragic event again.

Bitter? Moi?

I don't see a problem here. Perhaps Mrs Barnes had another birth companion there? I remember reading about Gordon Ramsey not being present when his wife gave birth [to twins I believe]. It was New years Eve, the busiest night of the Year for his business and he felt that was his priority.
I don't think either of these men were pricks. People have to take care of their family business in their own way, not what other people think they should do.If I was giving birth now I would choose not to have their Dad present at the labour and I know he would have preferred that. It would have been better for our relationship, and we should have done what felt right for us, not listened to other people's opinion or done what was fashionable.

Dh and I were watching it at the time. Even Dh thought it was a bit odd.

the dicky thing is presuming.you dont know what arrangements he and wife may have made.whether or not she infact agreed.she may have a doula/pal/family with her

DH has just pointed out that if Barnes has become a father 7 times, Liverpool beating Chelsea happens less often.

Hang on a minute, he waited to meet his own newborn.....

and ermm - hang on a minute folks according to our beloved DM - he left before the end of the match..............

Since when is it a fashion for men to want to meet their new born babies as soon as they can?

A lot of people here talking about him not being at the birth. That's not what the thread is about though - the baby was born and he said on national TV that he wasn't going to go and see it until later on after the goals/match/whatever.

I do not think that is normal behaviour for a new father, however many children he's got.

It's got nothing to do with his wife and who she had at the birth and so on.

It's to do with a father being told that there is a brand new baby waiting to meet him, and him thinking "well that can wait".

"Dick for sure. He must have known she was in labour and gone to the match anyway"

And was she somehow unwaware of this fact? presumably she agreed to him going. When we have no idea of their agreement it's impossible to judge. The fact that he was at a football match is irrelevant, that's his job. And it's not like a regular job where you could say "surely he could get the work done the next day" etc.
Chances are he knew he was commentating on the match long in advance and they knew there was a chance it would clash with the birth. They've most likely had this discussion and agreed something which they were with and suited them as a couple and has fuck-all to do with us.

...what some people except jarrs the mind..

*they were happy with...

Also don't let the fact that he did leave before the end of the match get in the way of stringing the bloke up.
He was asked by a colleague live on air if he was leaving. He might have been unusure of how that would go down with the bosses, if it would affect his pay or he might have simply felt put on the spot and didn't know what was expected of him professionally.
Now he might have left as soon as the 2nd half kicked off and he was no longer on camera and the majority of his professional obligations had been dealt with (the 10 minute analysis at half time being one of his major roles as an ex-player/pundit).
or he may have kicked back and watched 40 minutes of the second half until the result was pretty definite all the while making mysoginistic jokes about he indoors and wetting the babys head with his footie mates.
without knowing the facts it seems almost moronic to cast judgment.

*her in doors

no matter what job you have within reason you can leave to go and see your new-born no sane employer would have a problem with that..

"I was listening to Radio 5 a couple of years ago, and they were chatting to someone who had played for Liverpool in the 60s about a European match scheduled for that night, the presenter mentioned that player X was not travelling with the team as his wife had just given birth. The former player was stunned, he was clearly appalled at the lack of commitment to the team, but obviously realised it was not the done thing to say as much nowadays, he was almost lost for words, it made very funny listening"

Pretty sure that was Alonso. Nearly lead to him being sold and a lot of bad feeling around the club.

And it looks like they didn't. As I said he left before the end of the match. All I'm saying is we don't know what happened and that he was being asked by a colleague rather than a boss while he was on live television and only had about 5 minutes work left to do. He might simply have thought the best way to handle it would be to get through those 5 or so minutes and leave without causing disruption to a very important live broadcast rather than having to stand-up, get de-miked and say awkward goodbyes to his colleagues with millions of people watching him do so.
The main point is we don't know what happened.
The op states he stayed to watch the end of the match, that is factually incorrect. The only thing we know for certain is that when he found out he waited around for somewhere between 5-10 minutes to finish up some important work.
After that the only other thing we know is that he left before the end of the match. So that could mean he left straight away or he left around 50 minutes after being told the news. Everything else (including my own offerings of possible explanations) is pure conjecture.
And my only point is that to label someone a dick when the only factual information we have is that they stayed at least an extra 5-10 minutes to finish up some important work having found out the news during a live broadcast seems a bit ridiculous.

When DH was born FIL was having a lock in in his local, having been kicked out of the hospital when visiting hours ended as even though MIL was in labour the midwives didn't think anything would happen overnight. DH arrived at 2AM, FIL had a few more drinks, slept, had a full english breakfast then rocked up at the hospital at about 10AM.

There has never been any suggestion from MIL (or FIL) that this was anything but normal. And tere is no doubt that all his life, he has never been anything but an involved, interested, loving parent.

You don't need to see the baby immediately - maybe his wife wanted to get cleaned up and rested before she saw her husband? I didn't want DH in with me while I was in labour (I had an electivecs in the end so not an issue) she might be the same.