“I’ll have a poo tomorrow. I’m only going to have a wee-wee today.”

“I’m going to have a poo and a wee-wee.”

Ian looked around for the effect his announcement would have on his two brothers. So far, Piers and Lars looked unimpressed. He paused. “Together.”

In the four years since I became Britain’s first truly single father, such exchanges have become part of everyday life.

Six years ago I decided that my life as a carer for my elderly dementing father was going nowhere so I took what seemed to me to be the logical decision to have a family by using a surrogate mother in America. If, when my caring responsibilities came to an end, I managed to acquire a wife, all well and good. If not, I would still have my family — now three energetic triplets, aged four.

On this particular day, I was getting the children ready for nursery school and had become quite accustomed to having three different agendas fired at me simultaneously.

“Trousers down,” I said to Piers as he headed for the lavatory. “Trousers up,” I said to Ian as he had just left it. “Hands washed,” I said to Ian and “hands dried” to Lars who had just finished washing his.

In the two and half years since I had a nanny and started looking after the triplets on my own, such interaction has become the norm: I have become pretty adept at compartmentalising myself, a part for each of the boys, and nothing for myself.

I am a father, mother, referee, playmate, cook, cleaner, teacher, driver and factotum, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes in succession and often multiplied by three. In the hours between 9.30am and 5.30pm, I run the house, run my business and look after the cats. Once nursery is over I look after the boys. We are a family, as complete and as happy as any other in Britain.

It may seem an extraordinary thing to have done but my story shows that challenging personal situations can have happy endings and that the red tape of Britain’s adoption and surrogacy laws can be circumvented.

I took the decision to create my family at the end of 1999. I was 52. I did an internet search for surrogacy and one agency’s name — in California — came up. It sounded so easy that I didn’t realise until I flew to Los Angeles that it was an agency catering exclusively for gay would-be parents.

Had I been gay it might have been relatively simple from then on. But even on my second attempt at a different agency I discovered how much easier it is to create a family in America than in Britain.