When Andy Hallsworth found out he was abandoned as a baby outside a church, he assumed his mum had been a frightened teenager all alone.
He never gave the subject much thought until his adoptive parents died, and he decided to try to find out more.
But when he finally traced his birth mother, he was shocked to the core.
It turned out his birth parents had been married when he was born and went on to have seven more children.
Andy, 56, says: “I had a narrative in my head of a teenage girl in the 1960s with a problem.
"So when I discovered my parents were married when I was born, it was a lot to take in.”
The Irish couple were from religious families and Andy’s mother became pregnant before they wed in 1965.
They would have been disowned if it came to light and so moved to London where Andy was born three months later.
With money tight and a baby to clothe and feed, the couple decided to return to Ireland.
As they headed to Paddington Station in West London to catch a train to the ferry, they left their baby on the steps of a Catholic church.
It was a desperate and shocking act but incredibly Andy feels no resentment.
He says: “It was lovely to know that I was created in a loving relationship and that they stayed together.
“I got a bit emotional when I found out that they had tried their best to look after me for six weeks.
"But that sadness wasn’t for me, it was for them – that they had done their best.”
Andy did not know he had been abandoned until he was 37, when non-biological dad Stan blurted it out to him when he quizzed him about his medical past.
Andy, who lives and works in Norfolk as a zookeeper, grew up in Harrow, North West London, with adoptive parents Stan and Ann.
It was a happy childhood and he always knew he was adopted but had little curiosity about his roots.
The only record was a newspaper cutting of an abandoned tot at a church.
Andy and wife Catherine became parents to Lydia, 23, and Matthew, 17, while Andy’s parents passed away in 2018 and 2019.
Then last year he saw ITV ’s Long Lost Family and he began to think of his birth mother.
Through DNA searches, the show’s experts finally found a match between Andy and one of his sisters on a
genealogy website.
Andy, whose story features on the programme tonight, was told his birth father had died in 2009 but a reunion was set up for him to meet his 82-year-old birth mother in Ireland earlier this year.
He recalls: “I held her hand and we had a chat, we exchanged photos and I told her all about my life.
"She said it was a terrible thing to have done and she was very sad but that she had to.
"I said that I didn’t need an apology and that there was nothing to forgive.”
Andy also learned more about his early days, including his real date of birth and that he’d been named three times.
He says: “I did what I set out to do, which was to give peace of mind to somebody that maybe had been thinking of what she had done her entire life.”
Long Lost Family Born Without Trace starts tonight at 9pm on ITV.
