A remarkable picture could hold the key to the whereabouts of a Cheltenham man who went missing 15 years ago.

The image (top right) shows how James Thompson might look today.

The digitally-produced photo, issued by the Missing People agency, used age-enhancement technology.

James left his Charlton Kings home 15 years ago, never to be seen again.

Now, with his family preparing for another Christmas Day hoping the phone will ring, this could be the missing link that will bring him home.

James last spoke to his parents, Mike and Jenny, on March 8, 1994. He was 20 years old.

The previous August he had moved to Dublin and was staying in a house in Leo Street with a group of people he met there. He had been phoning his parents every week, but the day he had been due to return home he stopped all contact.

Mr Thompson, who travelled all over Ireland in a bid to find his son, said Christmas was the most difficult time of year for the family.

He said: "We are living in limbo. Every Christmas Day we hope he might phone, but he hasn't yet."

Mrs Thompson said: "It is like mourning, but there is not a body to bury. You get to the stage where you just want closure one way or the other."

She described her son as sensitive and caring.

She said: "I want to tell him to get in contact and we just want to know he is well. We love him and if we could hear from him over Christmas it would be the best present we could wish for."

The Thompsons believe their son is still alive and may have joined a group of new age travellers or become a follower of the Hare Krishna movement.

He said: "I have been in touch with various Hare Krishna groups and they tell me he could be with them but they are such big groups they couldn't trace him. I have stopped going over to Ireland now, but we think he is still there.

"We phoned the place where he was staying and they said he had gone to say goodbye to some people and never came back."

James is 6ft 2in with dark brown eyes and may have had his head shaved and have a pony tail in the style of the Hare Krishna movement.

Mr Thompson, who has appeared on TV appeals to find James, said: "For the first five years we never went on holiday just in case he came home. We still live in the same house with the same phone number."

In the time he has been missing, James has become an uncle to his brother Matthew's one-year-old daughter.

A spokeswoman for Missing People said: "By producing an age-enhanced image of how James might look now we hope it will assist in the efforts to locate him. When people go missing, it is traumatic for the people left behind."

■ If you have information about a missing person, you can call Missing People confidentially on freephone 0500 700 700 or visit the website at www.missingpeople.org.uk.

■ If you are a missing person you can ring the confidential Message Home service on freephone 0800 700 740 or email messagehome@missingpeople.org.uk