Meet The World's Famous Sexuplet

Graham Walton remembers the day the bombshell hit. Well, he says, it felt like a bombshell at the time.
With hindsight, it wasn’t even a firecracker. ‘We’d been on the adoption list and got word we’d been accepted and there was a baby available – possibly twins,’ he explains.

‘Well, I freaked. I said, “Twins! I can’t deal with twins!” To be honest, at the time I wasn’t even sure I could manage one baby.

I didn’t think I was good enough.’ Graham’s wife Janet had been told at the age of 16 that she was unlikely to have children naturally, and the couple thought they’d exhausted the medical help available at the time.

They went on holiday to Malta to have a think about the adoption offer – but by the time they returned, events had overtaken them.

Janet was pregnant – with sextuplets.

Graham – our very own Pa Walton – was about to become one of the most famous fathers of all, six times over.

The rest is history. The Walton sextuplets – Hannah, Ruth, Luci, Kate, Jennie and Sarah – were born in Liverpool on 18 November, 1983.

Arriving 31 and a half weeks into their mother’s pregnancy, they made front- page news, capturing the hearts of the nation, not just their parents.

Today, the Waltons – who are still the world’s only surviving all-girl sextuplets in the world – have just celebrated their 30th birthday, which no one outside the family can quite believe.

‘Everyone who remembers watching them on the TV when they were born says it makes them feel old,’ comments Janet, 61. ‘I say, “Can you imagine how I feel, then?”‘

Next week, all six sisters and their parents appear in an ITV documentary that follows them as they celebrate their milestone event.

There are the usual presents and cake, and a very modern extra: the girls mark their 30th by getting matching tattoos.

Janet says she wasn’t thrilled at the idea of a family trip to the tattoo parlour – ‘but it was what the girls wanted to do’. Each sister gets six hearts tattooed – but not all have them on the same part of the body.

Also in the programme, they travel to the States to meet up with another set of sextuplets – toddler boys, and as boisterous as they come. It makes all the girls consider how many children they want themselves.