His start in life was incredibly traumatic, but D:Ream singer Peter Cunnah reveals the joy of finding a whole new family in his late 50s
Alone, afraid and far from home, Ann McCrea was pulled into the chapel by a nun. The 21-year-old was pushed to her knees, which must have hurt – she’d only given birth a few days previously – before the nun thrust a set of rosary beads at her and barked: “Pray for forgiveness, and for your sins of being a harlot.”
As Ann clasped her hands, she could hear high heels clicking in the hallway. The nun, holding her before the altar, said: “That’s for your sins. That’s your child being taken away.” When a distraught Ann tried to struggle to her feet, the nun restrained her. Six decades on, the baby – Peter Cunnah, the Northern Irish frontman of dance-pop duo D:Ream – pauses and shakes his head. “That system,” he says.
He looks incredulous at the cruel punishment meted out in 1966 to his birth mother, who was unmarried and single, by nuns at mother-and-baby home Nazareth House, near Buncrana in Co Donegal. “And that’s the least of it. Some of these women were worked until they miscarried,” he says.
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Also known as Magdalene laundries, the homes have become notorious for their historic mistreatment of young, pregnant women in staunchly Catholic Ireland. “In some of these places, they’re finding bodies of babies buried in the grounds,” Peter says. At less than a week old, he was given up for adoption. Ann wouldn’t see her son again for 25 years. When the pair finally met, they were overwhelmed by emotion.
“I remember she said, ‘You smoke other people’s cigarettes?’” recalls Peter. “And I went: ‘Yeah.’ ‘You like spicy foods?’ I went: ‘Yeah…’ It was a really emotional moment where I thought, ‘Good God, she’s got the measure of me, and she’s not even started speaking with me’.”
Peter’s knowledge of his adoption is something that has consumed him, in various forms, throughout his life. But, in the last few months at the age of 59, the musician has finally found the full truth about his family and who he is.
“It’s been the final corner of the jigsaw puzzle,” he says, looking dazed with joy at his recent discoveries. They include a half-sister who, it turns out, is also a professional singer. And a half-brother who, like Peter, had his moments in the spotlight on Top of the Pops. And a father who wasn’t aware he even existed.
When Peter and I speak, he’s in Manchester to mark the release of D:Ream’s new album, Do It Anyway, with a concert alongside Happy Mondays and the Ibiza Orchestra at Cheshire’s Cholmondeley Castle. Adding to the party mood are his newfound family members, who have travelled from their homes across the North of England for the get-together.
All of them surprised Peter by wearing T-shirts printed with the title of D:Ream’s biggest hit – Things Can Only Get Better – poignantly followed by its lyric: “Now you found us.” As reunions go it even surpasses the moment at Glastonbury 2024 when D:Ream were joined by original keyboard player Brian Cox – now better known as a scientist, professor and TV presenter.
“That was such a lovely moment,” recalls Peter with a grin. When he introduced Brian on to the stage, “the roar from the crowd was like being at a football match when someone scores. Just a moment of pure, unadulterated joy”.
Growing up just a few miles from Buncrana, over the border in Londonderry, Peter knew from the age of four that he was adopted. Even before the woman he calls his mum officially broke the news, she dropped hints. “She used to sing Nobody’s Child, that country record!” Peter says, laughing.
“But one night, when we were alone, the truth came out. I said to her, ‘But you’re my real Mammy and Daddy.’” He doesn’t deny his childhood had some dark moments, though. “I had a bad start,” he says. “I came up through the Troubles. Being called a b*****d in the playground hurt. But I dealt with it.”
He was devoted to his adoptive parents, Les and Monica, and they to him – and to his sister Lesley Ann, who was adopted from different birth parents. Then, in 1991, just before D:Ream broke through, a letter arrived for him, care of Monica, via the Catholic Family Care Society. “My mother opened it. I’ll never forget what she said. ‘Son, I’ve been waiting for this letter for you all your life.’” It was from his birth mother. “It was an outpouring of absolute trauma and grief and regret,” says Peter, as he opens his laptop and finds a copy of it.
“Dear Peter and your parents,” he reads. “What you may call me is hard to know what to put in writing. I don’t want very much from you. I just want you to try and understand what I’ve been through for 24 years. Sometimes hell, not knowing anything, being told nothing.
“People through the years saying, ‘Peter will come to you.’ It helped me sometimes to think you will. But when I inquired, they could not do anything for me – up until this year. All I want is a photo and to know something about you. I don’t want to upset you, your family or my own. Peter, you might hate me… in all these 24 years, in my prayers I say, ‘take all sorrows and hatred from my heart’. But it’s still with me. God bless you and your parents… Ann McCrea.”
Peter went to meet Ann in her home in the Northern Irish town of Strabane, where she still lives at the age of 81. He discovered that in 1965 she was the lead singer of an Irish band called The Marines and in a relationship with the drummer. When she became pregnant, she was shipped off to Nazareth House. That was the end of her relationship and her employment in the band. Peter says: “When she saw me in 1991, the first thing she said was: ‘You’re his spit’.”
But she didn’t mean The Marines’ drummer. She meant their guitarist, Patrick Dusky, who was 19 in 1965. “Reading between the lines, I think it might have been a one-night stand,” says Peter. “Ann had tried to reach out to him back then. But her letters were stopped by her very strict Catholic parents.”
A long-overdue mother-son connection was formed – and as it turned out, a mother-mother-son connection. Peter says: “Ann and Monica became good friends. I have a great picture of me sitting between them at a D:Ream gig. I couldn’t have wished for a better outcome.” Ann went on to have four more children – Peter’s half-siblings.
But, out of love and respect for his adoptive father Les – who he describes as a “legend” – he chose not to try to solve the mystery of his paternity. Things stayed that way until Les died in December 2024, five years after Monica’s death. “I felt released from that honour and commitment,” admits Peter. “I thought, I need to do this now.”
So last spring, armed with email addresses and social media profiles dug up after “endless cold nights trawling the internet”, Peter contacted the woman he thought might be Patrick’s daughter. Bradford-based Philippa Hanna is a singer in the gospel world and her dad is called Patrick – but Patrick Hanna.
He’d relocated from Ireland to England and had a career as a travelling musician. Then, came the clincher: Dusky had been his stage name. Peter and Philippa began talking on the phone and forged an instant connection. To confirm what they both felt in their bones, Peter took a DNA test. It was a match with the Hannas. Patrick is his dad, and Philippa his half-sister.
“Philippa and I have struck up a great relationship, and she’s an amazing singer,” says Peter. “The DNA on this side of the family is running hot on music.” It certainly is. Prior to being married to Philippa’s mum Sandra, Patrick was wed to Cherine, with whom he had two children, Jacqui and Stuart Zender.
Stuart joined 1990s funk sensation Jamiroquai and had a child with another of the era’s pop stars – All Saints’ Melanie Blatt. Peter has now connected with Stuart by comparing memories of the music industry. “It was like talking with myself, honestly!” says Peter of their recent meeting in Manchester. “We’ve both been through the mangle of the music biz.”
Last May, Peter received a phone call at his recording studio overlooking Lough Swilly in County Donegal – only a few miles, it turns out, from the institution in which he was born. It was Patrick. “It was so amazing to hear his voice,” says Peter, his voice dropping to a whisper. Again, the connection was instant. “He was so easy to get on with.”
As for meeting the son he never knew he had, it’s been nothing but a tonic for Patrick. “He’s had some ill-health in the last couple of years,” Philippa tells me. “But it’s really given him a fresh wind in his sails.” And what of Ann? She was happy to hear about Peter and Patrick’s reunion.
“My [half-]brother Michael showed her pictures of me with Patrick,” says Peter. “She said she barely recognised him and he looked like an old man! My brother said to her: ‘Have you had a look at yourself recently?’ She did laugh at that.” Despite all those lost years, Peter understands how fortunate he is to have found his birth parents and to have been embraced by them and their families.
At D:Ream’s Manchester concert, Patrick Dusky was down the front, beaming and giving his long-lost son the thumbs-up – one dyed-in-the-wool entertainer to another. “If I was Elton John, I’d have him on stage with me!” laughs Peter. “But I am thinking about this year. It’s Patrick’s 80th, and my 60th, so I’m going to rent a mansion, with a pool and 40-odd rooms, and bring everyone over and have a big celebration.”
Who, I ask Peter, has been the most emotional, the most tearful, in all this? “Probably me,” he smiles. “I wear my heart on my sleeve. And with all that’s gone on, why wouldn’t I? There’s been enough hidden and held back. They say boys don’t cry. Well, they do, when it’s important. What was more important than finding family?”
*D:Ream’s album Do It Anyway is out now. See here for full 2026 uk tour dates
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Source: Mirror
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