| An Identity in Question By Martin
Doyle
BBC presenter Nicky Campbell tells Martin Doyle how it felt to trace
and get to know his Irish birth parents — a Protestant matron and a Catholic
policeman with a Republican past.
Nicky Campbell’s body is feeling stiff and sore. The host of Watchdog
on BBC1 and BBC 5 Live’s breakfast show has just walked the 420-mile length
of Ireland to raise money and awareness for an adoption charity.
But this was not the first time he has gone to such extraordinary lengths
over adoption — nor the first time he has put himself through the wringer
for its sake. That quest is told in his very personal and moving book Blue-Eyed
Son: The Story of an Adoption.
Campbell grew up with a very strong sense of identity as part of a recognisable
tribe — Edinburgh’s middle class. He was blessed with loving, professional
parents who went without to ensure he had the best education.
But there was one loose thread to this security blanket — the fact that
he was adopted.
His parents had always told him that this was the case while doing all
they could to reassure him that he was loved and had been chosen. However
his desire to find his birth parents sent him off on the ultimate identity
check, an odyssey of discovery that would become an emotional roller-coaster.
Campbell certainly knows how to grab the reader’s attention.
As in the line: “I was committing adultery in Room 634 of the Holiday
Inn in Birmingham when my wife rang to say they’d found my mother.”
His intention, he says, was to make clear that whatever came later, he
was in no position to judge anyone else — he just had a duty to understand.
Looking back 15 years to when he was 30, Campbell admits now that his
original reasons for opening the Pandora’s box of his parentage were needy
and misconstrued.
He wanted to find his birth mother because he felt then he would never
be a father as his older wife had two grown-up sons of her own. (The impetus
for finding his genetic father came many years later when he did become
a father.)
His marriage was in trouble and the search for his roots was something
to cling to.
When a private detective traced his birth mother to Dublin his wife forced
him to call her.
Terrified, he curled up into the foetal position.
“What the hell would I say? What the hell do you say? This woman gave
birth to me. At 29 I was about to make the first connection with my own
flesh and blood, someone to whom I was genetically connected.”
But his meeting with his birth mother Stella proved an anti-climax.
“I’d naively thought I’d already know her and have an instant, almost
spiritual connection.”
The strong, independent fantasy figure of his imagination was a fragile
human being. He found her emotionally unreachable, which on reflection did
not surprise him as he discovered that she had given up not one but two
children for adoption.
He discovered that he had a half-sister Esther who like him had been
born and brought up in Edinburgh.
Amazingly, when they met they realised they had childhood friends in
common and their paths had once crossed.
Esther contributes several pages of her own perceptions to the book and
they make a fascinating counterpoint to Campbell’s narrative.
Despite his Irish bloodlines, he displays an authentic Scottish trait
when he dismisses the idea of giving her a cut of the royalties.
Throughout the book, Campbell goes out of his way to reaffirm his love
for and loyalty to the parents who brought him up and details the agonising
he endured as he kept his decision to seek his birth parents secret.
“I felt there was something treacherous about tracing, something ungrateful.
You go through guilt feelings, whether Catholic or Presbyterian. It’s most
natural to want to know. It’s a right to know what your genetic legacy is,
to trace that line through time.”
In fact, he did not start looking for his genetic father until his real
father had died as he felt he would have been hurt.
When he eventually told his mum that he was in touch with his birth parents
she was delighted.
He makes it clear that the Campbells are his real parents, his only mum
and dad, and writes touchingly of how he and the father who brought him
up loved each other for the qualities that they felt they did not possess
themselves.
Campbell describes himself as “quick, clever, a right little show-off”.
Others have called him vain and arrogant. When he writes to his genetic
father he describes himself as “a presenter of some renown”.
He cringes to think of it now but says: “It was a child’s cry”.
As he jokingly writes, TV presenters are no strangers to a mirror. Of
course, when he looked in a mirror, he saw in his reflection no family resemblance
to his mum and dad. Curiosity was driving him to find the faces that bore
traces of his own, to learn more about what nature had given him to complement
the nurturing he had received in Edinburgh.
His had been a happy, privileged childhood, yet at times he had felt
“invalid, ungrounded, ill-founded ... given to arbitrary sadness”. Being
adopted had given him a reason and excuse to feel different. “I am not your
real child anyway” became an adolescent weapon.
He describes the process of meeting blood relatives for the first time
as entering a hall of mirrors, the staring on both sides as eyes seek out
the features that confirm a genetic link.
From a strictly Irish point of view, the most fascinating section of
Campbell’s book is when he traces his father — who turns out to be in many
ways the block off which Nicky is a chip.
His genetic father, whom Campbell calls Joseph to protect his identity,
grew up in South Armagh and got involved in militant Republicanism — once
going on an operation with the legendary Sean South.
He told Campbell a close relative had been shot dead by the British Army
as a member of the IRA — which came as quite a shock to Campbell, whose
proud heritage until then had been one of undiluted service to the Crown
and Empire.
“One of the interesting but obvious conclusions about all this,” says
Campbell, “is realising if I’d been in South Armagh I might have been forged
a different political animal.
“The genetic search has reinforced in my mind the importance of where
you grow up, what happens to us.”
If he was disappointed by the lack of an instinctive bond with Stella,
he struck lucky with the discovery of a genetic father who becomes a bit
of a soul mate.
“He’s my father but he’s not my dad.
He’s very interesting, very lively company. If I met him in a pub, I’d
get on with him.”
Since discovering his Irish roots, he has taken an ever keener interest
in Irish affairs but refuses to say what his own views are.
“I couldn’t in a million years say what my firm view is. I’d be hauled
over the coals. All I would say is I really seek to understand the nuances.
Certainties annoy me. If I encounter any sort of fundamentalism, I immediately
jump over to the other side of the argument.”
So what is his identity now: Scottish by upbringing, Irish by blood?
He has said in a previous interview that he wouldn’t want to become a “dreadful,
pathetic, plastic Paddy” but is happy to clarify.
“I’m just talking about my own situation, not someone who grew up all
their lives with that heritage. This heritage has just been sprung on me,
I sprang it on myself. If I was suddenly to start supporting the Irish rugby
team against Scotland, that would be at best psychologically flawed.
“I’m not saying how can people who have Irish grandparents claim to be
Irish, of course they can, but there’s something vaguely annoying about
a guy in a kilt at a wedding telling you he’s from Putney.
“I feel Scottish but I recognise my Irish background and heritage. I
feel very comfortable in Ireland. There is a Celtic overlap, anyway, an
inextricable lattice of influences.”
Campbell admits he has become an “adoption anorak”, joining the debate
on the right of children conceived through anonymous sperm donors to trace
their genetic fathers.
“It’s a right to know what your genetic background is,” he says.
He also feels strongly that it is best for the adopted child to make
the first approach rather than the parent who gave their child up for adoption.
He feels there is an emotional logic to this but no longer opposes the
right of a parent to get in touch first, having been assured it would be
handled extremely sensitively by the adoption support networks.
He is also happy to advise others who have been adopted.
“I don’t think it’s a healthy thing to seek out a mother or father if
you’re looking for a mum or dad for they’re two very different things,”
he says.
“I was more emotionally secure when I met my father. I knew I wasn’t
looking for anything beyond the impetus of curiosity.”
Has his experience changed his views on abortion?
“I’m not anti-abortion but am at the very conservative end of pro-choice,”
he says. I’ve always been acutely aware that there but for the grace of
God. That could have happened to me.”
Blue-Eyed Son is published by Pan priced £6.99.
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