Mayor to be father at 56

Ken Livingstone is to be a father - at the age of 56. The Evening Standard has learned that his girlfriend and office manager Emma Beal, 34, became pregnant during a romantic holiday across Australia earlier this year.

It will mean London's Mayor coming to terms with being a first-time father while grappling with major issues such as the congestion charge and the PPP. He will also seek re-election in 2004.

The development will also invite parallels between Mr Livingstone and Prime Minster Tony Blair, who also juggles a massive schedule with the demands of family life and a young child.

Mr Livingstone began seeing Ms Beal after ending his relationship with Kate Allen, 45, his partner for the past 20 years. The pair split last November saying they had spent several months apart but would remain good friends. Close friends blamed the pressure of his job and hers as the UK Director of Amnesty International.

He was previously married in 1973, to Christine, a teacher, but they were divorced in 1982. The Mayor today declined to comment on the news. "I made it a rule a long time ago that I never comment on any aspect of my private life," he said.

But political opponents fear the worst. "He's tetchy now, what will he be like when he has been up all night with a baby," said one.

Mr Livingstone handpicked Ms Beal to run his private office after his election victory two years ago.

Before that she had frequent contact with the Mayor in her role as office manager at the Evening Standard's ES Magazine, for whom he was the restaurant critic.

Friends say that prior to the relationship and the election he made his intentions clear. One said: "He told her soon after they met 'I am going to have an affair with you - and if I become Mayor I am going to give you a job'."

The two have been desperate to keep the relationship private. Friends of Ms Beal initially denied the relationship existed and the Mayor insisted that his private life should remain so.

Ms Beal was one of the aides he took to New York during his first official mayoral visit abroad.

The couple were also together in public during the St Patrick's Day celebrations in March. Mr Livingstone then took Ms Beal with him on a three-week holiday across Australia, which he bought at a charity auction staged by the Lady Taverners.

They were seen together in Australia by Tory Assembly member Angie Bray. "They didn't seem an exceptional couple but they looked very comfortable together," she said. "We discussed how wonderful Sydney was."

The friendship started when the couple first met at the Kensington Place restaurant in 1996. Mr Livingstone was to be offered the job of restaurant critic on ES Magazine and journalist Adam Edwards planned to take him to lunch but could not make the appointment.

Ms Beal, his personal assistant, went instead. Simon Fletcher, now the Mayor's chief of staff, was also there.

Mr Edwards said: "Ken had been writing a column for a men's magazine but when he stopped doing that we offered him the job of restaurant critic. Emma wanted to meet him and she went instead of me.

"By all accounts he was hugely charming and witty. It was a very long lunch. They both drank quite a bit and he was joking and flirting with her."

He added: "Ken came back to the office afterwards and was joking with all the sub-editors and generally messing around. After that Emma would deal with him and his column and they would talk a lot on the phone. They used to go out for drinks and there were always rumours of a fling.

"Ken resigned as restaurant critic after the election and two weeks later she got the job in his office."

Mr Edwards said she was a brilliant personal assistant. "She was always very efficient and very smart. She also wrote the odd piece to make some extra money. But she had no interest in politics at all."

The baby is thought to be due around December. Though hitherto childless, the Mayor, who will be 57 in two weeks, has been an enthusiastic uncle. During Labour's mayoral selection process, he was called to Chequers to meet Mr Blair and insisted on taking his young relatives with him because they had missed out on a visit to the zoo.

Jack O'Sullivan, of the information service Fathers Direct, said contrary to popular belief, middle-aged fathers tend to find the transition from bachelorhood to fatherhood easier than younger men.

"Older men are more secure in their identity and are more likely to have made a positive choice to have a child, while a sur prising number of younger men feel they have been forced into fatherhood."

Ken is in the old father club