Kenneth Bell sits on the edge of his seat when he goes to a Birmingham City football match.

But it is the faces of the fans, not the people on the pitch, that the 77-year-old is intently watching - because he hopes that somewhere among the crowd will be Michael, his son who went missing 22 years ago.

The electrical shop storeman, who was 27, vanished while on a camping trip to the Isle of Skye with a friend on May 14, 1983.

In his usual way, Michael had called his parents to let them know where he was. From a phone box in Dalwhinnie, in the Scottish Highlands, he told them about a row with his friend and his plans to return home.

Then the phone went dead. Police in Sheldon, Birmingham, where Michael lived with his parents, investigated the out-of-character disappearance with their colleagues in Scotland. Social services, the National Missing Persons Helpline, newspapers, television shows and radio stations tried to help. But to no avail.

Yesterday, four days after Michael would have celebrated his 50th birthday, Mr Bell walked from Birmingham's Gas Street Basin to Bromsgrove's Tardebigge Lock to show his son that he had not been forgotten.

It was also to raise money for the National Missing Persons Helpline and to accompany another father, Derek Burns, whose son - also called Derek - vanished 16 years ago.

Mr Bell, a retired industrial chemist, said: "I remember going back to work when Michael had been missing for more than a week and having a bit of a weep.

"I thought something had happened to him for him not to have made contact. When we found out that he hadn't taken any money out either we just thought the worst.

"Since then there have been a few sightings, but none have ever come to anything.

"My son was a very keen Blues fan. I have been to the matches for 22 years hoping to see him in the crowd. Sometimes you tell yourself not to even look.

"It is just so out of character. He was always at home and we were quite a close family. I remember him as a lad going with us on holiday to stay with his grandma in Bognor.

"He used to love bragging to his friends about how well his mother cooked for him and I used to help him with his maths homework. Then his teacher would wonder why he did so badly at the end-of-year exams!

"He'd phone us everywhere he went, even if it was down the road to watch the cricket at Edgbaston or from the tennis in Wimbledon. He was good like that. We have all his classroom pictures on our dressing table. Not a day goes by when we don't look at them and remember."

Michael's mother, Sheila Bell, still dreams about her son.

The 72-year-old retired clerk said: "They are happy dreams and then I wake up and it is a terrible feeling to know that the reality is he is still not here.

" His friends and his younger brother Philip have children now. Michael would have been so good with them, he had such patience.

"If I saw him tomorrow I would be absolutely overjoyed, I really, really would. It wouldn't matter where he had been or what he had done, nothing would matter.

"But I have very faint hope of that happening."

* For more information on the National Missing Persons Helpline call 0208 392 4592 or go to www.missingpersons.org