Trading places pupil finds dad

Teenager Ryan Bell turned his life around after being sent from a London sink estate to a public school in a " trading places" TV experiment. Having spent months on the streets and on the fringes of criminality, the 15-year-old is now a star pupil at the £15,000-a-year Downside boarding school in Somerset.

Now the Evening Standard can reveal how has been reunited with the father he had never known.

Jonathan Domas and Ryan's mother, Jackie Bell, split up before Ryan was born. The boy barely saw his father as Jackie struggled to raise him.

However, a chance encounter on the Larkhall estate in Lambeth this summer led to Ryan meeting up with his father, with whom he now lives outside term time.

Ryan had returned from Downside for the holidays when he met a relative who
was working at a youth centre on the estate. The relative commented on how much Ryan looked like her uncle, Jonathan.

Painter and decorator Mr Domas, 35, said: "The next day I went to the youth centre to meet Ryan. I recognised him straight away. It was amazing. I couldn't get my head round how my tiny boy was now a man.

"I got the impression Ryan had been looking forward to us being reunited for a very long time. I can't make up for the 15 years that I wasn't part of his life but I'm doing the best I can."

Mr Domas said he had had a turbulent relationship with Ryan's mother. "Jackie became pregnant with Ryan when she was 18 and I was just 19. We had already split up. I had no idea she was pregnant until she came back six months later with this huge bump.

"At 19, some kids would have run away but I was so excited and wanted to be there for my baby. But Jackie didn't see it my way. She was going through a lot of personal problems and I was cut out of Ryan's life."

Mr Domas added: "When Ryan was about five I was in contact with him for about three months but things went berserk again and Jackie practically disappeared. I just hoped there would come a time when Ryan would ask his mother about his father."

Three years ago, Mr Domas made a fresh attempt to make contact but was told wrongly that Jackie had gone to America with Ryan.

Without a strong paternal influence Ryan slipped into bad habits - regularly staying out late, lying in bed until the afternoon and playing truant from school. There were a string of clashes with teachers at ADT College in Putney.

Around 18 months ago he was expelled and spent more than four months on the streets. Next-door neighbour Alan Hennings said that by the time Ryan was 13 he was hanging around with older children who would be seen smoking drugs and getting into trouble with police.

Ryan's mother was evicted for nonpayment of rent on 4 August and has not been back to the estate since. It is understood she is living in a halfway house, although she does have some contact with Ryan at school.

Last year politician Trevor Phillips, having heard of Ryan's expulsion, persuaded Ms Bell to let him fund Ryan's education at boarding school in return for permission for his production company to make a TV documentary about his life.

She agreed and, in September 2001, Ryan swapped inner-city streetlife for the playing fields and Victorian buildings of Downside, the West Country Benedictine school.

There the 6ft 2in schoolboy was kept down a year, because of the time he missed at ADT College, but is now on course for 10 GCSEs next summer.

He has used his startling sprinting ability - once utilised for running away from police - to star for the under-16 rugby XV on the left wing.

Mr Domas accepts his son has been fortunate. "Ryan has been lucky but he is not unique. "There are lots of talented kids in the inner-cities who would do equally well if only they were given a chance."