THE product of several generations of singing insurance salesmen, David Lovatt thought he was all alone in the world. Then he began researching his family history, and discovered relatives he never knew he had.

"It has been a remarkable experience. As an only child, I had thought that I was completely on my own. I knew there had to be relatives out there, but there had been no contact between the family branches in more than 30 years and I never thought there would be again, " says Lovatt. "Yet within a day of first beginning to search for them, I'd rediscovered relations all over the country and re-established contact with the branch that still live in Scotland."

Unlike many fledgling genealogists, who begin searching for their ancestral lines because they don't know enough about them, Lovatt's quest began because he knew so much. An avid collector, over his lifetime he had amassed an enormous collection of documentation, photographs, diaries and other family memorabilia.

Having grown to appreciate their value, he was determined to ensure that the treasure trove would not be abandoned to fate when his own end arrived.

"I knew that unless I could track down somebody else who cared, all of these wonderful memories would just be tossed on to the scrapheap when I died, " he says.

"That's why I had to find out what happened to the rest of my family - so that our history won't disappear whenever I do."

Although he has not been able to verify all the facts yet, family legend has it that, driven from their Aberdeenshire homes in search of work, the Lovatts moved south of the Border five generations ago, first entering the record in the form of one Gordon Lovatt, who settled in Derby. Clearly something of a "catch", he outlived a procession of four wives and fathered many children, one of whom was Lovatt's grandfather, Percy Elijah Lovatt.

Although a mild-mannered superintendent for the Prudential insurance company by day, by night Percy was an entertainer, founding a theatrical family legacy that exists to this very day. Leaving behind two small sons, in 1914, he was shipped to France, where, in addition to his front-line duties, he ran concert parties entertaining the troops, before being captured by German forces in 1915. His love of the greasepaint and footlights endured even behind barbed wire, however, and he continued to work for the amusement of his fellow prisoners of war, organising a variety of shows and shindigs designed to bolster morale.

"The conditions they lived in were really quite terrible, and I have to say that I'm very proud of my grandfather for enduring it the way that he did, " says Lovatt. "I still have many of the toys and props he made while he was in the prison camp, and they remind me of just how much we're all capable of, if we really put our minds to it."

An accomplished pianist and vocalist, Percy also wrote volumes of poetry during his time in the trenches, several of which were published in newspapers of the time.

Upon being released after the Armistice, he returned to Derby and, despite continuing to work in the professional theatre for the rest of his career, resumed his duties at the Prudential.

It was perhaps no surprise when Alan Raymond Lovatt, Percy's youngest son and Lovatt's father, followed in Percy's footsteps. Born in 1913, he was to pursue an almost identical career. Joining the Prudential straight from school, he also managed to combine the world of insurance with a lifelong involvement in the theatre.

Qualified as an accountant, when the second world war broke out, he joined the Royal Army Pay Corps and met fellow number-cruncher George Mitchell, whose forces choir became a wartime favourite.

"Entertainment has been part of the family for as long as I can remember. Just about everyone we knew seemed to belong to showbusiness and I've got fond memories of going to meet people like Beryl Reid and Roy Hudd, " says Lovatt. "It might seem strange to some people, but it was an ordinary thing to me."

The connections with showbusiness did not end there. One of Lovatt's recently discovered second cousins, Ian Lovatt, played keyboards for the backing band on one of Michael Jackson's world tours.

Hidden in his mother's lineage there is also a touring Victorian concert impresario and a theatrical agent.

It is small wonder then that Lovatt himself joined the Prudential while maintaining the family link with the world of showbusiness.

Throughout his career he has served as an entertainer for local charities, while the ancestral connection to music has continued through his own playing and songwriting. He has composed two tracks inspired by his research - Just Friends and Do You Really Care - which are being released for free via the genesreunited. com internet site.

"I always felt that entertainment was in the blood, " says Lovatt. "Now I can prove it." With such a rich family heritage to pass on, not to mention an enormous collection of theatrical posters, reviews and news clippings to document it, tracking down an heir struck Lovatt as something of a high priority, and last year he decided to do something about it. With family relationships having been severed over the course of many decades, there was some doubt as to whether the task would even be possible, but he decided to give it a try anyway and, as it turned out, hit the jackpot within 24 hours.

"I started by entering my family tree on genesreunited. com, which lets you search to see if any of then names in yours match with those in the lineages of other researchers. That same day I got an e-mail and was put in touch with my uncle Ken, who we hadn't heard of since 1972 but turned out to be living a short drive away, " says Lovatt.

"Then I got hold of the phone book and started ringing all the Lovatts I could find living in Scotland and a few hours later I was talking to a relative in East Kilbride.

That's given me something to go on, and I'm well on my way to rediscovering my Scottish past now."

Initially bitten by the genealogy bug when helping his late father track down his mother's family tree some years ago, Lovatt believes that the internet has made the entire process of genealogical research much more effective and affordable. Even a decade ago, drawing out his maternal line proved an expensive and exhausting business, requiring many field trips to access local records and costing a small fortune in search fees to locate each document.

"Even though my maternal grandfather had meticulously recorded the details of each birth and death in the family Bible, confirming all the details took several years as I had to drive 250 miles just to visit the relevant archives, " he says. "It's always good to back up what you find with field research because you'd be amazed how much more people can tell you when you do, but the internet has made accessing this kind of information so much easier."

Despite having located some of the lost relatives he set out to find, Lovatt is now determined to keep his research going and build up a complete picture of why the Lovatt clan was forced to leave Scotland.

While he assumes that their migration was provoked by poverty, he is optimistic that the official record may be able to fill in many of the blanks that history has left behind.

"The great advantage of researching Scottish ancestors is that the national records north of the Border are far more comprehensive and complete. They have also been available over the internet for a lot longer than the equivalent in England, and so are generally much more accessible, " says Lovatt. "As a general rule of thumb, tracing antecedents is easier in Scotland than just about any other country in the world."

Filling in the gaps in his family history has, says Lovatt, helped make sense of who he is and where he comes from. No longer considering himself to be alone in the world, the fruits of his genealogical research have left him with a comfortable sense of his place in history.

"Nothing can replace the satisfaction of knowing where your roots are. It makes a lot of other things fall into place, " he says. "I used to think I was the only one left, but now I take pleasure in understanding what came before me and what will follow after."

BIOGRAPHY

A RETIRED insurance professional and part-time entertainer, David Lovatt's love of history was sparked off by his family's enormous collection of personal diaries, photographs and memorabilia. His interest in genealogy was initially fired while helping his father research his mother's family tree, but it was not until after his father's death that it became a real passion. Spurred on by the fear that his parents' archives would be disregarded after he himself has gone, he started his research in the hope of locating relatives to whom he can pass on the ancestral collection.