Select From Two Tables

I apologise if this has been answered before _ I did search but didn't find anything.

basically I have two tables, temp_list and mailing_list

Both tables have a field called 'email' which stores an email address.

On sign up to the mailing list, I need to be able to check whether the email address being signed up exists in [b]either[b]table (it woun't exist in both unless something ahs gone terribly wrong).

I have tried something like this:

SELECT *
FROM mailing_list, temp_list
WHERE mailing_list.email OR temp_list.email = "email@to.search.for"

and loads of other similar things. The above query, helpfully returns all rows in both tables.

I have trawled though all the relevant documentation and help forums I can think of and learnt lots of interesting and complex things about JOIN e.t.c but I can't seem to solve this very simple problem.

Or is the solution to use two seperate SELECT statements UNIONed together?

Thanks for any help.

Paul

Yeah I thought of that just as I was finishing my above post.

I thought I would as to see if there was a better way anyway.

Cheers mate.