Meet 'Ed Houben' Europe's most virile man

 

Ed Houben has an unusual pastime. He has slept with scores of women who seek him out for his legendary powers of insemination. As John Laurenson discovers, he doesn't charge.

Mr Houben is a "charitable sperm donor". He helps lesbian couples, single women and heterosexual couples with fertility problems to have children free of charge.

He started out in 2002 donating sperm to a sperm bank.

But his sperm donating career (he has a day job, by the way, as a tour guide) really hit its stride when the Netherlands, like many other European countries and Canada, banned anonymous sperm donation and he started offering his services for free on the internet.

'Looking for Ed'
 
He now donates his sperm in the "traditional way". Using the apparatus God gave him rather than a syringe. "Much better chance of conception," he says.

 People probably think it's 'oh he has sex without responsibility' but usually I'm the only person people can talk to if it doesn't work," he says.

What motivates him, he says, is "the beautiful hope of creating a new life that will be loved and looked after".

There are dozens of photos of children around the place, too. So many he has bought a digital frame. A slideshow of snaps of 98 children.

On his computer he keeps an up-to-date list of his progeny to reduce the risk that they might unwittingly interbreed.

"If, later on, one of my children meets someone who doesn't know who his natural father is, he can consult this list," he says.

One day, Mr Houben says, he hopes to find a woman who will want to have his children and start a family with him.