Heartwarming moment man, 21, meets his father for first time by chance in off-licence

Walking into an off-licence on a normal Monday and starting up a conversation with a stranger can change your life forever.

That is what happened to Oliver Archer, 21, who felt the ‘one in a million chance’ butterfly effect in action last week when he went to pick up a Vinted package from his local corner shop in Ladbroke Grove, west London.

Growing up without knowing his dad, Oliver would ask his mum about him ‘all the time.’ As a nine-year-old, he secretly searched his name on Facebook, which was one of the very few details he had.

Last month, Oliver’s DNA ancestry test confirmed that he is half-Turkish, but didn’t reveal anything about his father’s side of the family, and he almost gave up trying to find him.

Oliver told Metro: ‘My mum used to say my dad might be back in Turkey, or still back in London, so we never got the full details.

‘The only thing that I never knew about my dad was his name, that he was short, and that he was fully Turkish. That was all I ever knew of him.

‘I’ve always been interested in wanting to know him. I’m not here to demand an explanation or point fingers. I’ve always wanted to know him, and I was doing what I could to find him, but it was never successful.’

Oliver, who is an online fitness coach, continued his life and accepted that it might be difficult to ever find him, but he ‘never fully gave up.’

And on Monday last week, he randomly decided to spark up a conversation with a stranger he heard speaking Turkish on the phone at the counter.

After asking him if he spoke Turkish, the man asked if Oliver knew any, and he replied ‘tiny bit’ and that he is half Turkish.

He revealed he was also from Istanbul when Oliver said that was where his dad was from.

Oliver told Metro: ‘I thought it had nothing to do with my dad, but when he mentioned Istanbul and I saw that he was short, and I saw slight familiarities.

‘I then asked his name, and I told him it was the same as my father’s name.

‘The second I said that, that’s when something rushed through my body, some kind of adrenaline and I just thought f***, let me try my luck.’

The man was about to walk out of the shop when Oliver asked him to wait outside.

The pair’s first-ever conversation was caught on the shop’s CCTV, which Oliver shared on his TikTok.

The clip had millions of viewers on the edge of their seat to find out about the subsequent conversation outside.

Oliver said: ‘I apologised to him that it was a bit personal and said he is welcome to just walk on, but I asked if he had had ties with a woman and gave my mum’s name and my auntie’s.

‘He interrupted me at one point and said “I think I know where you’re going with this.”

‘I said I’m so sorry for throwing this onto you – I kept apologising, I don’t know why – but I’m just going to say it: f*** it, I might be your son.

‘Then we both just stood there awkwardly smiling and laughing about the situation. After that, we had a conversation, and he was telling me about his mum and that I’ve got loads of other siblings as he has got five boys and one girl.

‘I’ve got five sisters and two brothers on my mum’s side.

‘It was a shock to the two of us, but here we are now, we exchanged numbers and we’ve been messaging back and forth almost every day.’

Oliver said they are planning to meet up on Sunday.

He added: ‘My life has done a bit of a full circle. When I was 18, I moved back into Ladbroke Grove, and he’s obviously stayed in this area this whole time. One conversation led to another, and we’ve done a full circle.

‘I’m over the moon. Definitely something unexpected and a one in a million. I’m lost for words. There’s so much I want to say.’

Oliver said that it is never too late for people to reconnect, and it is always worth just starting a conversation.

‘Rather than thinking about what you’ve missed in all that time, the best thing is to address the situation in front of you. If he would have turned around and said “sorry, I’m not interested, but good to meet you”, I would have carried on with life.

‘But because he is interested, it has given me a sign of hope and a sense of optimism for what’s to come. Instead of holding onto a grudge or resenting him, even if this same encounter would have happened at 45 or 50 years old, I’ve got to see his take and reaction to it.

‘What is important now, is what’s in front of us rather than trying to fill every gap over the 21 years.

‘I’m a very accepting person, good or bad. I had quite a difficult life growing up, so it conditioned me to just become more accepting of things. I had already accepted a long time ago that he wasn’t in my life and that it was going to be difficult to find him, but I never fully gave up.’

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