A HAMPSHIRE mother will today make an emotional appeal for her son to get in touch - seven years after he vanished without a trace.

The story of Paul Balmforth's disappearance will be featured on the BBC 1 programme Missing in the continuing bid to track him down.

It remains a mystery that has left police baffled and his loved ones desperate to know that he is safe and well.

His mother Angela, pictured above, refuses to give up hope that she may be reunited with her eldest son and painfully admits that "it feels like he never lived sometimes".

The 27-year-old went missing after a night out in South-ampton on February 8, 2000 - the day the world stopped still for his parents and three younger brothers.

"You ask yourself, what's happened to him?" said Mrs Balmforth. "Where is he? Where are you Paul? Why haven't you got in touch?"

With grand ambitions for the future, the aspiring writer had everything to live for and was just putting the finishing touches to his first novel. But he has never got in touch with family or friends, there have been no sightings of him and neither his body or the bag he was carrying have been found.

See today's Daily Echo for the full story