Davina searches for Belfast man’s family

The programme strives to reunite family members, whether it be twins separated at birth or young mothers who had to give up their babies, and sometimes the process also sheds light on siblings or relatives that people never knew existed.h

Throughout nine series, and various revisits and specials since the show’s debut in 2011, hosts Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell have consistently plucked at our heart strings.

Each episode features the painstaking work of a team of DNA experts who set about solving dozens of mysteries, before the two presenters dole out earth-shattering information – followed by plenty of really long hugs.

Among the famous stories that have been featured were that Deborah Ozturk from Essex, who had longed to find her birth mother who gave her away as a baby.

Plus there was Marc Wolfe who was reunited with his mum Esther 50 years after she had given him away; and Columbian-born Christina Barlow whose reunion with her biological parents made This Morning’s Ruth Langsford to sob in 2018.

In short, it is sad stories, but with mostly happy endings.

However, just when you thought the Bafta-winning reunion show couldn’t get any more emotional, the Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace special aired last year.

The one-off 90-minute programme showed that for foundlings – people who were abandoned as babies – the stakes are, if anything, higher. However, the chances of success are lower.

Born ‘without a trace’, foundlings have previously had few options as they looked to unlock the secrets of their past.

However, as this new two-part series shows, by combining new DNA technology with painstaking detective work, the mysteries of people with unknown beginnings can finally be solved.

Each person involved expresses a need to know where they came from in order to know who they are. And what is always nice about the programme is that there is no judgment, and the people involved all talk about and acknowledge the trauma their birth parents must have experienced.

These are the buried stories that the programme unearths – the desperation and deep isolation of women who feel they had no choice but to abandon their babies just after giving birth.

Over the next two nights, Davina and Nicky are hoping to enable four more foundlings to finally uncover their identities.

Tonight, we hear the incredible true stories of David McBride who was abandoned in a car as a two-week-old infant on the outskirts of Belfast in January 1962, and Helen Ward who was left in a tartan bag in a telephone box in Dundalk in 1968.

Tomorrow, the team meets Simon Jeffery who was left in a box outside a railway tavern in Greenhithe, a story which hit the headlines but which he only learned about by chance at the age of 10.

Finally, Fi Beazer was discovered in a public toilet in Warminster when she was only a few hours old.

Both have spent their adult life trying to track down their parents and have now submitted DNA samples in the hope of finally getting the answers they seek.

All four of the individuals featured are searching for answers to the most fundamental questions they have craved for years: when’s my birthday; where do I come from; who are my parents and who am I?

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