Troubled childhood of BBC presenter

From an early age he was haunted by his weight, his parentage and his sexuality. But Christopher Price, the 34-year-old BBC presenter who was found dead in his central London flat from an apparent overdose of barbiturates prescribed for an infection this week, evolved a jokey gregariousness that helped him become a star.

Today the tragic £250,000-a-year newsreader can be revealed as a troubled but not unhappy man who struggled to adapt to the life fate had thrown before him.

Christopher's story starts six months before he was born when London Social Services arranged for him to be adopted by a middleaged Catholic family from Norfolk. His real mother, a working class girl from the Scottish Highlands, had fallen pregnant and fled to the capital to have her child. No one knows who the father was.

Price's adoptive parents, Patricia and Clifford Price, were a deeply religious couple, well into middle age when their new baby arrived. Clifford, a quiet 51-year-old, had retired as chief accountant for the Nigerian Ministry of Education.

Patricia was 47, a teacher at the local convent who already had two children of her own and fostered a third, Christopher's big sister Michelle. If adopting Christopher was a duty, it was one the couple carried out as wholeheartedly as their age allowed. It was a fairly solitary life. Christopher was adored, particularly by his brother William, who was eight years older. But the siblings were all much older, and away at school, and it would have been hard for strong links to develop between them.

So Christopher's early life was spent alone at Temple Bar House, the family's isolated 16th century home. It was a happy, if strange, upbringing for the little boy who played in the extensive grounds or sat on his own drawing or playing with his Lego.

His mother Patricia, now 82, says: "Christopher was the baby of the family and was treated as such. He was very much loved. But most of his friends were away at school and because he didn't go to the village school he didn't know local people. He seemed happy enough. But he was self-contained to some extent."

From an early age he worried about his weight and asked if it was because of his real parents that he was fatter than his siblings.

In a matter-of-fact way Mrs Price says: "He was somewhat unhappy about his size and perhaps wondered what was at the back of it, whether it was from his parents. His weight fluctuated, but there were periods when he absolutely stuffed himself. He was worried about his natural background and I believe he might have tried to trace his real mother.

"We had always told him about the adoption. But when he came to me and asked details there was very little I could tell him about her. I didn't know much."

When he was eight Christopher was sent to Morton Hall, a Catholic boarding school in Bury St Edmonds and five years later to Worth Abbey, a sporty Benedictine public school in Sussex.

From an early age, says Mrs Price, her son wanted to work in TV, insisting she send him videotapes of the Eurovision Song Contest - which he loved and in a strange irony was chosen to present before he died. But as he struggled with a growing awareness of his homosexuality, school became an increasing burden.

In an interview with the Evening Standard he said: "There I was at 16 to 18 with these very strong feelings with no way to express them. I was falling in love with my friends every day but feeling so confined. I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

A schoolfriend from Christopher's Worth days says: "He was self-deprecating about his weight and very very funny, doing these stand-up gags. He was obviously a bit different but he made himself hugely popular."

After Worth, Price went to Paris, where he worked as a PR for an oil company and indulged his homosexuality more freely. Typically, he kept his sexuality secret from his family, according to his mother. "He never told me until it all came out in the papers when he got this lucrative job; he didn't tell me personally, I don't approve of it," she says. "I always had my suspicions of course - he never brought girls home - but he knew I'd have been happier not knowing." She never met any of his partners.

Price went to Reading University, read Italian and politics, worked briefly as a supermarket stacker in Tesco and joined his local newspaper. He moved to the BBC in London and lost regular contact with his family. When Christopher died, it was more than 13 months since he had seen his mother. "We moved a long way away," she explains. "He was always moving about. Meeting up had hazards but there was no estrangement as such."

In London Christopher, although with a wide circle of friends, lived alone and moved from rented digs every six months. Friends say during this time he had periods of depression, but never serious enough for him to contemplate suicide, as was initially suspected last week. At the time of his death Christopher had plans to meet friends the following week.

One friend says: "He had his ups and downs. He wore his heart on his sleeve. He was fairly alone, yet wanted a nice relationship and joked how he didn't get on well with his family. What he was happy about was the future. He lived for his career."

Mrs Price says: "He seemed to collect people and he was always loved by everyone. Personally, I don't think he was likely to commit suicide and I really don't think he was involved in drugs at all and he didn't drink much. Perhaps he died of a heart attack - he was very overweight. I think he was generally happy now. The last time I saw him he was very pleased that he was succeeding in what he always wanted to do.

"It's tragic really that just as he achieved things he died at the age of 34."