Entertainment
The most emotional Long Lost Family moments of all time
Hosts of Long Lost Family Nicky Campbell and Davina McCall (Picture: ITV)
ITV’s series Long Lost Family often makes viewers laugh and cry as it reunites with long-lost relatives and shares their emotional stories.
The award-winning show, hosted by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell, traces and reunites families who have been estranged for most of their lives.
The programme returned for the fourth series on July 1 after winning a bafta for outstanding features earlier this year.
The often-heartbreaking documentary series charts people’s efforts to reunite with long lost parents, children, siblings and other family members.
Here we have shared some of the most tear-jerking moments from the show.
Ann’s emotional adoption story
Ann was reunited with her son Mark (Picture: ITV)
During the fourth series, we met Ann Munro, who was coming into contact with the baby boy she gave up for adoption 41 years earlier.
Ann met her son Mark after her daughter contacted the show to help with the reconciliation, as Ann had been living with the guilt of giving her baby up for adoption.
‘When I finally met my son Mark and held him, my shattered heart healed. Having him back in my life means more to me than winning the lottery a million times over,’ the mother said.
Thankfully their story had a happy ending as her son Colin, had forgiven his birth-mother for the difficult decision she made that day.
‘Knowing he understands and forgives me for giving him up means I no longer spend every evening weeping, and every night lying awake,’ Ann explained.
Claire’s search for parents in Hong Kong
Claire visited the stairwell on which she was found (Picture: ITV)
A recent episode of the show was a strong contender for the most heartbreaking episode of all time.
During the episode, a woman named Claire looked for her family in Hong Kong, where she had been abandoned as a newborn on a stairwell.
When she was young she spent months at a local orphanage before officials found her adoptive parents in the United Kingdom.
Sadly her adoptive mum died when she was just 12, so Claire was desperate to find her biological parents.
Claire returned to Hong Kong with the show’s help and visited the stairway where she was abandoned and the orphanage where she formerly resided in in incredibly emotional scenes.
While she never discovered her biological parents, she did meet a man who had lived in the building at the time she was found. Claire was over the moon to at least have some connection to her past.
Unknown Solider special
The show had a First World War special (Picture: ITV)
In 2019, ITV aired a special edition of the show dedicated to the First World War. And that reduced the audience to tears.
Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell followed a Ministry of Defence team in their search for the families of unknown soldiers killed in World War One.
In one moving incident, a relative of an unnamed soldier stood by and watched poppies being placed in the ground.
‘Now that I know more about my heritage, I have a family to be proud of,’ he remarked.
Robert and his estranged father
Robert discovered his father died (Picture: ITV)
Last year Robert – who was on the documentary series in 2015 hunting for his father – was featured in an episode of the spin-off show Long Lost Family: What Happened Next.
The father of three from Ayrshire had never met his father as a child, but during the show, they were able to find him down in Split, Croatia. He was 71 and had no idea Robert existed.
The pair stayed in touch, but their phone conversations became less regular until one year they ceased communication altogether.
Robert returned to Croatia to find out why they had lost touch on What Happened Next, and discovered his father had died in 2017.
Long Lost Family airs Monday’s on ITV at 9pm.
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