Soccer Aid was back on our TV screens tonight helping to raise money for UNICEF.
Alex Brooker was among the line up of famous faces hitting the football pitch. He became the first ever disabled player in the history of the charity event.
Speaking before playing in the match, for England, Alex said: "For me, football was the first time when actually my disability, genuinely, I can honestly say, it stopped me doing something and it bothered me." With his quick wit and belly-laughing humour, the comedian has become a household name over the last few years, reported The Mirror.
READ MORE: Soccer Aid 2022: Kick off time, TV channel, who is playing for England and World XI
He came to prominence since 2012 following his coverage of the Paralympic Games and has since become a regular on our TV screens. The 38-year-old, who often highlights his disability within his comedy, was born with hand and arm deformities.
The Croydon-born star had a twisted right leg, which meant that he had to have his leg amputated as a baby. Alex wears a prosthetic leg and always appears to be in high spirits - revealing in an interview that some days he doesn't "think about [his] disability at all".
Alex told The Guardian in 2020: “Most days I don’t think about my disability at all, but doing that swim brought it clearly into focus. It made me realise it was time now, as a father of two, to take more responsibility over my disability and to find out more about it.”
Having endured over 40 operations as a child, an abundance of check-ups, and spending most of his childhood at Great Ormond Street Hospital, the 38-year-old hasn't had problems since. Alex - who has been married to wife Lynsey since 2014 - candidly revealed his fears about becoming a father for the first time.
The couple share two children together - a daughter called Daphne in 2017 and they also have another younger daughter, whose name and age isn't known. Ahead of their birth, Alex has since revealed in a touching interview that he was "terrified" about his children possibly inheriting his disability, or if he might struggle to hold them.
He told What's On TV: "Even though my disability is not genetic I was terrified every time we went for baby scans." Speaking on a BBC Sounds podcast in 2020, Alex said: "I get very emotional talking about the idea of, how will they feel about having a disabled dad?
"And it's one of those things that I slightly have made bigger in my mind over time. Ever since I was old enough to think about the idea of having a family, when you hit your teenage years, I thought, 'If I have kids one day, I wonder if they'll be all right about it.' So that kind of self-consciousness came very early on, and it's always been there, and then all of a sudden my oldest was three and literally a couple of weeks ago she said something about my hand for the first time."
Despite Alex's initial fears, when the conversation finally happened, it could not have been easier. He said: "We were walking by a river and she said, 'Oh, daddy, you've got two fingers haven't you, and I've got more?' And I was like, 'Yeah, yeah, that was how I was born.'
"That was it, and she didn't say anything else, she wasn't freaked out, she didn't stop holding my hand, she didn't cry. So these horrific scenarios that I've built up in my mind, it's all done and dusted in about five seconds, and I thought, 'Jesus Christ, like 20 odd years worrying about that and that was it.'
"Every parent worries about whether their kids are going to be proud of them or are they going to think they're cool, this is just slightly different because it's about my disability. So I've actually realised that, over time, I make a bigger thing of the disability angle in my head than maybe I should."
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