Gino D’Acampo says he has no desire to be seen as a ‘cool’ dad like David Beckham
(Picture: ITV)Gino D’Acampo has hit out at David Beckham, claiming that he has put pressure on working dads to spend more time with their children.
The TV chef, 46, who shares sons Luciano, 20, Rocco, 16, and a daughter, Mia, nine, with his wife Jessica, said he has no desire to be viewed as a “cool” dad.
He also said point blank that he would never build Lego, watch a children’s film, or do colouring and crafts with his kids, and that feeling pressured into doing things with them was all “c**p”.
The Italian native made the jaw-dropping claims while speaking to Giovanna Fletcher on her Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast.
He said: “I don’t have those kind of regrets that fathers or mums have because they work and they don’t spend enough time [with their children].
“I come from a generation where I used to see my dad in the evening Monday to Saturday, when we had dinner at the table, for about an hour. And then I used to see him on Sunday for a couple of hours. He used to take us to the park or something like that.
“I don’t buy into this thing where I have to feel that I have to do things, or society makes me feel that I have to do things all the time with kids,” he continued.
“I think it’s insane when I see a lot of working mums and working dads, they’re kind of suffering because they wanted to spend more time with the kids, but probably not because they want to but because they feel they have to.
“I blame David Beckham - not literally - because before David Beckham dads they used to go to work and they used to see the kids in the evening, then he came around, or people like him, and we started to have social media, so everybody started to see what other celebrities [were doing].
“They used to take their kids everywhere, they used to take the kids to school, they used to take the kids to work - it was like “that f**k’s ruined my life that man, now I have to do the same”.
“We all felt we had to keep up with this cool parenting where you’re doing things.
“Dads taking their kids to school? I never remember seeing any dads when I was a boy going to school.
“This idea of the cool dad and the cool mum is c**p. Why would you feel guilty?”
Insisting to Fletcher - a mum-of-three herself - that he doesn’t hate children, he said he just doesn’t have much patience for them.
“I don’t want to say I don’t like children, because it’s not true. I don’t like the children when they’re children,” D’Acampo continued.
“I love my girl Mia, she’s my princess, but if she says to me ‘Would you like to do Lego with me for half an hour?’ the answer is no.
“’Would you like to watch again Frozen II for an hour and 20 minutes?’ No.
“And I don’t feel that I have to just because she’s my princess. If I say to her “Let’s go shopping”, that’s what I do.
“I don’t want to do children things - colouring, all that cr*p, glittering, not interested, never been interested, never, ever, ever.
“Cooking yes, that’s probably the only thing I would say ‘Come on, one of you give me a hand’.
“I don’t have patience for kids. For me they can come to me and start to talk to me sensibly after about 13 - they need to be teenagers. I’m more present now for my boys than I was before.”
