PENSIONER Basil Oddie finally came face-to-face with his famous cousin, thanks to a TV documentary which traces the family history of celebrities.

For years people used to ask, 75 year-old Basil if he was related to his famous birdwatching namesake Bill and his reply was always the same: "Not that I know of."

But now, thanks to the BBC2 documentary, the retired electrician has finally discovered he is actually related to former Goodie Bill Oddie.

Bill discovered he is Basil's cousin, five times removed, while researching his ancestral history as part of the programme Who Do You Think You Are? screened last week. And a film crew recorded their one and only meeting when they met in the Duke of York pub, at Grindleton, the home of the Oddie family for hundreds of years.

It emerged that the pair shared a great, great, great, great-grandfather, a Wilkinson Oddie, born in Grindleton in 1754. Originally handloom workers, the family split soon after when Bill's great, great, great-grandfather moved to Rochdale at the start of the Industrial Revolution to work in the textile mills. Basil's side of the family stayed in the village mainly as farm workkers.

Bill, 63, traced his roots back to Rochdale, before discovering his ancestral link with Grindleton.

Basil left the village in 1965 and now lives in Brookfields, Mellor. He was contacted by the BBC last winter and was told he was going to meet a mystery man who thought they could be related. Basil added: "We seemed to hit it off and he seemed like quite a nice fellow."