Sandi Toksvig - Personal Life

Personal Life

She was born in Copenhagen. Her father Claus Toksvig was a foreign correspondent for the Danish television channel Danmarks Radio so Toksvig spent most of her youth outside Denmark. In 1969, while her father was covering the Apollo 11 Mission, Toksvig held hands with Neil Armstrong's secretary as he stepped on to the moon. She attended Tormead School, an independent girls' boarding school near Guildford, when he was based in London.

She studied law, archaeology, and anthropology at Girton College, Cambridge, graduating with a first class degree and receiving two prizes for outstanding achievement (The Raemakers and the Theresa Montefiore Awards). Her brother, Nick Toksvig, attended Hull University and was a friend of journalist and Beirut hostage John McCarthy, with whom Toksvig undertook a yachting adventure around Britain in 1995. Her sister Jenifer Toksvig is a musical theatre bookwriter and lyricist.

I wouldn’t care if they came from Tesco. I don’t care about the blood thing. They call me Mummy and I earned it. We love each other. You can’t do better than that. Lots of families don’t.

She is a lesbian and mother of three children: two daughters, Jessica and Megan (born 1988 and 1990) and a son Theo (born 1994). The children were carried and borne by her then-partner, Peta Stewart, and were conceived through artificial insemination by donor Christopher Lloyd-Pack.

In 1994 charity Save the Children dropped her services as compere of its 75th-anniversary celebrations after she came out, but following a direct action protest by the Lesbian Avengers, the charity apologised. She lives with her civil partner, psychotherapist Debbie Toksvig.