BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

Hello, welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

I'm Jo Fidgen, one of the hosts of the BBC's Lives Less Ordinary podcast.

We share extraordinary personal stories from around the world,

and we'll bring you an episode here from time to time.

But to hear every episode, search for lives less ordinary in your usual podcast places.

In this edition, I meet M. People star Andrew Lovell, whose home life hid a terrible, beautiful secret.

It would take him decades to find it out.

My dad called me down and walked into the living room and the television was off.

And I sat there and my dad said, okay, Andrew, were you asked about your real parents?

He said, let me tell you, we were going to take this to our grave.

My mum hadn't said a word. My mum just staring at the floor through the whole thing.

I was silent. I was shocked. Everything was the same, but everything was completely different.

It was Christmas Day, 1998, when Andrew Lovell sat down to have a heart to heart with his mum and dad.

He was 33 and famous, not just at home in Britain, but around the world,

as part of one of the most successful dance music acts of the time, M People.

You might know moving on up, that was one of their top 10 hits, or search for

the hero, or One Night in Heaven. Shovel, as he was known to music fans, was the percussionist.

But he wasn't entirely happy. He'd been told as a boy that he was adopted, and that explained

why he was the only black member of a white family.

But he just had this annoying feeling that his adoptive parents weren't telling him the truth

about his past.

...