Gill Thompson has met Michael Bardsley this month as, after she and her daughter did some research on Linkedin, they found the man’s account – and recognised his “family nose”
A grandmother discovered she had a brother and finally met him after 73 years apart — after tracking him down on LinkedIn.
Gill Thompson, 73, had no idea about her father Colin Bardsley until, in scenes akin to ITV’s Long Lost Family, she received a Christmas card from her paternal grandfather at the age of 25.
She learnt he had relocated to Cape Town, South Africa, remarried and had a son named Michael Bardsley — but was unable to find him following her initial searches in the late 90s.
Gran-of-four Gill was inspired to resume her search in August last year when an opponent at her bowls tournament had the same name.
Gill’s daughter Sammy, 31, managed to track him down on LinkedIn — recognising him as her half-brother thanks to the family nose.
Michael, 64, and Gill came face to face for the very first time at Colwyn Bay railway station in north Wales on June 8.
Gill, a retired PE teacher from Llandudno, north Wales, said: “I felt very emotional as I watched Mike’s train coming in.
“We embraced as only long-lost brother and sister could do.
“We had a happy evening catching up on a lifetime of memories.”
Michael, a sports film producer from Cape Town, South Africa, said: “I saw the joy on my sister’s face and a flood of emotion and memories of my dad kicked in.
“As we hugged the reality sank in – after a lifetime apart I was now holding on to my closest living relative.
“It was worth every mile of the frustrating journey of cancelled trains.”
Gill’s parents – Joyce Priestley and Colin Bardsley – tied the knot in 1952 after discovering Joyce was pregnant with Gill, but the couple separated before she was born and later divorced.
Gill said: “I just never knew anything about him. I never asked and mum never said.
“I was just happy and I never thought about it.
“Other kids at school talked about ‘mummy and daddy’, I just said ‘I don’t have a daddy’, for me it was ‘mummy and nanna’, that was normal.”
Following Joyce’s death at the age of 56 in 1986, Gill stumbled upon a photograph from her parents’ wedding – setting eyes on her father’s face for the very first time.
She said: “It felt as though mum wanted me to find it eventually.
“I was amazed and excited to see it.
“He looks quite like me.”
Gill, also mum to Nick, 34, discovered her father had remarried and fathered a son named Michael when she got her first home computer 27 years ago and began trawling through birth, marriage and death records in the hope of tracking him down.
However, as her husband at the time, Ian Hainey, was seriously ill with oesophageal cancer before sadly passing away in 2004, she put the search on hold.
30 years later, now wed to Peter Thompson, 79, Gill learnt they were due to face a Michael Bardsley at the Colwyn Bay Crown-Green Bowls Festival in August 2025.
It turned out not to be Gill’s half-brother, but the coincidence sparked the curiosity of Gill’s daughter Sammy, who tracked down a LinkedIn profile belonging to a sports film producer named Michael Bardsley based in Cape Town, and sent him a direct message including her phone number. Gill said: “Sammy was sure it was him. She said we have the same nose.
“It’s the same nose my dad had, and my son has it too.”
Sammy received a phone call from Michael back in September, which paved the way for Gill and Michael to enjoy a half-hour FaceTime chat shortly afterwards.
Michael had always known his father had another child, but lacked sufficient details to track her down.
Gill said: “I was so excited and nervous.
“He said ‘this is the most wonderful thing ever’, and it was.
“We talked for ages. We both laugh a lot, and we’re both into sport, and both work in sport.”
Through Michael, Gill discovered her father had a sister with three children — cousins Jacqueline, from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, Nicola, from Northwich, Cheshire, and Alison, from London.
The newfound siblings now exchange texts every week and catch up on FaceTime every fortnight. Michael even spent two weeks staying with Gill in June, during which time the pair also got together with their cousins.
Gill, who shared her remarkable story with Sell Us Your Story, said: “We’re both delighted.
“This wouldn’t have been possible at all without the Internet.”
