MADNESS singer Suggs discovered his Scottish father had died from an online encyclopedia.
The musician, real name Graham McPherson, had hoped to meet up with his father, William Rutherford McPherson, who abandoned his family when his children were young.
Despite years of searching through public records, he was unable to find out what had happened to him – until a friend suggested he try Wikipedia, compiled by thousands of volunteers.
Suggs, 51, said: "It said that my father had died in 1975, aged just 40. The thing is this website knew more about my life than me and my whole family combined.
"My dad died in Birmingham, so I contacted the records office and a nice man pieced things together for me. He had remarried so there was a glimmer of hope he had turned his life around. But it was all a bit of a mess.
"He didn't have any other kids, which put paid to the chance I might have stepbrothers or stepsisters. When his death certificate arrived it was a real shock."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article