A member of the Northern Irish South Down Assembly took a break from speech writing yesterday to deliver his own baby.

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Former dairy farmer John McCallister, who is running for the leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, said delivering his son Harry on the bathroom floor “took his mind of Saturday’s election – for a while anyway”.

“It happened pretty suddenly. It was not the sort of thing I was expecting to be doing. We didn’t have time to get to the hospital,” John explained. He called an ambulance and was talked through the delivery by hospital staff on the phone.

Little Harry James arrived half an hour later weighing 7lb 10oz. Mum and baby were taken to Craigavon Hospital and are both doing well today.

John admitted that although he’s calved cows before, helping his wife give birth was, unsurprisingly, “a lot more nerve wracking.”

He added that it was an “amazing day” even if Harry didn’t arrive in the most glamorous of locations and that big sister Molly, 18 months, celebrated her brother’s arrival with “a drink of milk”.

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