Long Lost Family

No matter how many of these programmes you watch, the moment when Davina McCall or Nicky Campbell tells someone their long lost relative has been found is always profoundly moving.

This week 53-year-old Richard wants to find the older brother he knew nothing about until several years after their mother died. Richard had been staggered to learn that his mother had given birth to two children – both were subsequently adopted – before marrying his father. But despite searching for 14 years, he’d not tracked his half-brother John down.

John, meanwhile, had been told his birth parents had died in a car crash so he had never bothered to look for them or any other relations. “The only family I’ve ever known is my adoptive family,” he says sorrowfully.