MY FINGERS are trembling as I type this; the roller coaster of emotions I have experienced over the last few days have been immense.

I hardly know whether to laugh or cry.

To fill you in...

As a baby I was adopted and the information given to me by my adopted parents was more fairytale than reality. I have tried on many occasions to trace my birth mother and father.

A few years ago my friend Nigel traced my father, Albert Salter.

The poor soul had been knocked down in a hit and run in 1992.

The inquest made interesting reading but brought me no closer to finding my birth mother Edith.

Trying to trace Edith has been a continuous mystery, until last week when a pure fluke brought me a lead which I had missed before.

The trouble was that the writing at the top of a print out was blurred and illegible and so I hadn’t understood what it was telling me.

In the end I took a guess and found to my utter surprise that my mother Edith had re-married in 1953, a Prince no less.

Well, I always thought I was of royal blood. It was in fact an Albert Prince, a master builder, not Prince Albert, Queen’s Consort.

My mother had divorced my father (it seems she was partial to Alberts) and married Mr Prince who had divorced his wife.

My next search revealed that my mother had died in 1992.

It was with relief that I read this as I can’t imagine how I would have felt if she had died recently.

As Edith was 38 when she became Mrs Prince it occurred to me she may possibly have had children.

So I fired up my loyal computer and checked births in Hackney with no real expectation.

You could have knocked me down with a feather as up popped one little boy born in 1954 and then another in 1956.

Suddenly in the space of two days I have traced my mother and established I have two half brothers whom I hope to contact soon.

What will I discover next - five Aunt Mauds, four Uncles Joes, three Irish cousins, two barrow boys and a nephew in a Christmas tree!