An American couple has came forward claiming to be the estranged parents of a "bogus earl" who commited a Day of the Jackal-style identity theft.

The couple from Orlando, Florida, said they recognised pictures of the self-styled Earl of Buckingham, who was jailed in England for 21 months in November for stealing the identity of a baby who died in 1963.

Theories about the true identity of the man without a past have circulated since he was convicted last year under his assumed name of Christopher Edward Buckingham.