Three top judges urged the man and the woman, now living in the Lynn area, to whom he donated sperm, to put aside hostilities in the interests of their daughter.

He agreed to donate his sperm to a friend of his gay partner so she could have a child – and she gave birth to a "delightful" daughter, London's Civil Appeal Court heard this week.

But relations between the father, who is from the Oxford area, and mother turned sour soon after the birth. She and her little girl, aged under ten, moved to Norfolk and for the past five years the parents have been locked in a legal "war" over his contact rights.

In the TV soap gay Sean Tully fathers a child with barmaid Violet Wilson.

Their arrangement runs into trouble when Sean pressures Violet into letting him become more involved in the child's upbringing.

At the Appeal Court this week, the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, argued that a contact order made in December last year did not let him see his daughter often enough.

He accused the mother of wanting to "restrict" his relationship with his daughter and said she was anxious that he and his partner were trying to take the girl away from her.

FAMILY UNIT

"She is very clear that the family unit is mother and daughter alone and that I am not part of the family," he told the court.

"But she (the girl) thinks of me as her dad and she should be allowed to think of me as her dad."

The mother told the judges she understood the father was unhappy with the current contact arrangements, but said that he was going to have to "learn to live with them".

Lord Justice Wall, sitting with Lord Justice Thorpe and Lord Justice Stanley Burnton, told both parents he had been "left with a sense of great disappointment" after reading the case papers.

"This girl has two highly-intelligent parents. They both love her dearly," he said, adding that the way in which the girl was conceived was "water under the bridge" and the father should play a role in his daughter's life.

However, he said that the father had sometimes pushed for "inappropriate" solutions to the dispute and the mother had been left with a sense of acute insecurity.

"This girl's mother has been seriously overprotective and over anxious," he added.

"She must recognise that the contact order made by the judge was designed so that this man can play a full role in his daughter's life, as her father.

"The parents should put on one side their hostility and anxiety to each other and should seek, for once, what is in the best interest of the child.

"That is why this is a very sad case – the child is delightful. She is lively, energetic and is everything parents would want of a child.

"But there is a grave danger that, if these parents continue their war against each other, her interests will be wholly submerged."

The judge said the father had to understand that the girl's home is with her mother, and the mother had to recognise his right to have a "full and proper relationship" with his daughter.

Despite agreeing that the current, complex, contact arrangements are ambiguous, Lord Justice Wall refused the father's application to appeal against them. He said the father could ask the county court to iron out any ambiguities in the contact order.