I was told I was adopted... then I found out my ‘adoptive’ mum is actually my real mother...
Mystery solved after years of heartache
Andrew Lovell remembers being surrounded by nothing but love growing up in the 60s and 70s – but there was always a nagging mystery about his real parents.
Being a black child in a white family meant, outside the front door, he stood out but at home he felt safe and secure – and he did not want to rock the boat by voicing his burning questions.
“I’ve got bundles of happy memories growing up. We lived on the third floor above a shop, no bathroom, downstairs toilet in the garden,” says Andrew, 52, of 1990s platinum-selling band M People.
“From the very first sports day at the age of five, my mum and dad were there. Football teams, rugby teams, they’d come and support me,” he said
He grew up in South East London hearing the word “adopted” but neither of his parents volunteered any information on the circumstances of his birth.
It was a complicated family secret that would only be revealed to Andrew in his 30s – long after Arthur and Joyce’s love and support had helped him become a successful drummer and earned the nickname “Shovell”.
“My first band was a reggae band,” he says. “So being a reggae band in Lewisham, it would be like a thousand black people and my mum and dad sitting at the back with a cup of tea saying ‘oh this is nice’.”
But, believing that his birth mum had given him up as a baby still haunted him.
Through his teens he was rebellious and cheeky, getting kicked out of school at 15.
“My anger, my attitude to authority, I had a reason for it but I didn’t realise it at the time,” he says. “It’s always in your subconscious – ‘your mother’s given you away, your mother’s given you away’. It affects every single thing you do. Your self-worth is on the floor.”
Andrew’s music career took off with M People, famous for hits including Moving On Up and Search For The Hero, and he ditched his plumbing job.
It wasn’t until September 1998,
It’s always in your mind – your mother’s given you away ANDREW LOVELL ON HIS STRUGGLE FOR THE TRUTH
pondering what he would tell his children about his heritage, that he found the confidence to gently raise the issue of his adoption with his parents.
Christmas night brought the bombshell. Speaking ahead of new genealogy show Secrets In My Family, on tonight, he says: “My dad said, ‘We’d have gone to the grave with this but you asked. Your mum here, Joyce, is your mum’. My head exploded. I was like ‘wh-at?’ It was a sledgehammer.
“My mum didn’t say a word. She wouldn’t look at me.”
For the next year Andrew was in a
state of shock escaping into work and touring with the band. He had “found” his real mum but she had committed a mind-boggling act of betrayal. And there was another blow to come. “It was so overwhelming, like this incredible tsunami of emotion, I just couldn’t control it,” he says. “And me being this geezer from South East London, I thought I could.
“I went to some very dark places. I thought about ending it all. One minute I was top of the world, living the dream in the band and the next I was on my hands and knees, literally.
“The only light in that time was my dad’s unconditional love. I feel so, so blessed to have had him.
“January 2000 I was in the recording studio and I ended up shaking and crying, proper wailing. I had PTSD. I drove to see mum and dad.”
That moment heralded a new era for Andrew’s family. “For the first time in 13 months my mum said ‘I’m sorry, I love you’ and hugged me.”
Finally the whole truth came out. Joyce had been working at the Peek Frean biscuit factory in Bermondsey in the 60s and often spoke of close work friend George.
They had had an affair. And Andrew might never have become part of the family. Everyone was told he had died at birth, including Andrew’s brother.
But Joyce had stayed with the baby in hospital breastfeeding him for 10 days until social workers took him. Andrew was fostered for five months while his parents faced the situation. “On the day I was born, dad opened the door of the maternity ward, mum was holding me and she said, ‘I’ve made a mistake’. “It was the first my dad knew. He just turned on his heels and left to digest it and then he came back and they talked it through, making up the story. “This was 1964, attitudes were so different. You didn’t air your dirty washing. Now we’ve got Jeremy Kyle. You got on with it in those days, and you kept your mouth shut. “Mum would have been racked with shame and guilt and not wanting to be seen as a scarlet woman.” Arthur and Joyce wanted their son back and had to jump through hoops to “adopt” him. “My mum fought for me. She loved me without question. It wasn’t even 100% that she would get me back, says Andrew. “My brother had to go to court as a seven-year-old and say he would look after this new baby coming home.
“And my dad had to stand up and say he would take this new child on.
“It was a real battle, but I know mum fought for me out of love.
“What she did has had huge ramifications but I forgive her, of course I do. I will always love her to bits.
“My dad passed away in 2014 and my mum’s in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s but I couldn’t wish for more loving, caring parents. I honestly couldn’t.”
Andrew has been married to a personal trainer, 16 years his junior, for four years. They have no children.
He is looking for his Jamaican father after having his DNA analysed at Ancestry DNA. Within moments of clicking on to his profile Andrew found a first cousin, Ericka, in Jamaica.
“She hasn’t responded to my emails – yet,” he says.
The Secrets in My Family, tonight, 9pm on UKTV’s W Channel