INTERNET SENSATION Ted Williams – the man with the ‘golden voice’ – has been tearfully reunited with his 90-year-old mother – despite wars between two US television networks trying to scoop each other with footage of the scene.

Williams, a Brooklyn native who had moved to Ohio before falling victim of alcoholism and drug addiction and ending up homeless, became an unlikely hero when the Columbus Dispatch newspaper posted video of him showcasing his “God-given” radio voice on the side of a street while begging.

Immediately, his video went viral – going all over the world, and leading to a flood of job offers from local basketball teams and US radio stations.

Williams’ priority, however, was to be reunited with his longsuffering mother, for whom he had always prayed, hoping his circumstances would change so that he could travel back to meet her and assure him he was okay.

Yesterday, he was reunited with his mother at an hotel in New York City – a reunion that was almost hampered for a number of reasons, not least because as a homeless man, Williams didn’t have ID – something he needed to be able to get his NBC-arranged flight.

When he finally did make it to New York, having gotten a copy of his birth certificate in a last-minute dash to a local courthouse, his waiting mother (90) – who had been brought there by rival network CBS – was left unable to meet him.

NBC, trying to protect their scoop, immediately shepherded him off into a van and away. They were unaware, NBC later said, that Williams’ mother was on hand to meet him.

MSNBC later published the following video of the two being reunited at last, in a hotel room after Mrs Williams made an early-morning appearance on CBS’s ‘The Early Show’, and after Williams himself had appeared on NBC’s ‘Today’.