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Life Changing

The coalman who could have been a prince

Life Changing

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.6804 Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Keith Williams aka Keith ‘y Glo’ or ‘Keith the coal’ was born in 1952 and brought up as the son of a coal merchant in South Wales. At the age of 13 he found out he had been adopted but it was only when he was in his forties and expecting a grandchild that he started looking into his family history.

He eventually tracked down his birth mother and arranged an emotional reunion. It was at this first meeting that Keith asked her about his birth father and was presented with a bundle of documents and photographs. She told him that his father had been a young Malaysian prince who had also been studying in London. They had fallen in love and started a relationship but he was forced to return to Malaysia, where he later became the Sultan of Perak, one of the country’s nine royal families.

That revelation and Keith’s search for answers has taken him to Malaysia and back as he attempts to piece together who he really is and what defines his identity.

In another life Keith could have been royalty, and while that knowledge has changed him he reflects that he wouldn’t have had what he has now; the warmth and love of his large Welsh family and the strong relationship he built with his birth mother.

If you have a story you would like to share you can contact the programme at Lifechanging@bbc.co.uk

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Eleven climbers appeared to have died on the world's second highest mountain K2.

0:06.0

It was one of the deadliest days in mountaineering history.

0:10.0

Rock falls, avalanches.

0:11.0

Huge pieces of ice. All are big enough to kill you.

0:14.0

He just flew out into Devoid and he was gone.

0:17.0

How did it all go so wrong?

0:19.0

And is it really worth risking death to feel alive?

0:22.3

Why would somebody pay to go to a place called the death cell on a vacation?

0:27.4

Extreme.

0:28.3

Peak Danger.

0:29.3

With me, Natalia Melman Petrazella.

0:31.8

Listen to the full series now.

0:33.4

First on BBC Sounds.

0:36.4

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

0:40.0

Hi, this is Jane Garvey, and welcome to life-changing.

0:43.6

Now, you don't often get a moment in life,

0:45.6

which gives you a glimpse of how completely different things could have been for you.

0:51.6

Had one or two different decisions been made by other people,

0:56.4

decisions over which you yourself had absolutely no control. As you'll hear, today's guest on

1:03.0

Life-Changing, Keith Williams from Clinethley, got a shocking taste of exactly that when he started

1:09.6

to look into the circumstances of his birth

1:11.9

and adoption back in the 1950s. This conversation is really about identity, isn't it? It's about

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