In the year 2000, I knocked on a stranger's door. I had been waiting to do this since childhood when I saw a film with the actor, who played John Boy Walton, do the same.

That stranger was my birth mother. I had no memory of her. I had tracked her down by various means. She lived in abject poverty in the roughest part of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. Her TV was coin metered. I didn't even know that was possible.

She told me an extraordinary back story of heartache and tragedy and lies and how I was cruelly taken from her. In reality I was a (repeat, left) "home alone" baby and I was taken into care. It had made the local newspapers. She made no attempt to take me back.

I met her a few times in 2000 and discovered new brothers and sisters, but unlike John Boy, it was not a happy ending and we have not been in touch since.

Later I wrote a monologue about my experience, in the style of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, but from her perspective. It was performed several times by a semi professional actress, as part of an evening of Am Dram Monologues. One night she couldn't perform it due to illness, So I went on stage and read from the script myself.

At the end of the theatre run, at the after performance party, I was presented with a statuette, for Best Supporting Actress!