The second episode of series 14 of ITV’s family history series Long Lost Family will air tonight (15 July) at 9pm.
First broadcast in 2011, Long Lost Family is presented by Nicky Campbell and Davina McCall and follows members of the public as they seek to trace family members they lost contact with, whether children, parents or siblings.
In tonight’s episode, viewers meet 74-year-old retired council worker Paula Beer, who’s a fifth-generation resident of Bridgend, Wales. When she was seventeen, Paula got pregnant after a short relationship with a local boy. She concealed the pregnancy from her parents and ultimately went to stay with her aunt in Essex to have the baby, who she arranged to have adopted.
Paula gave birth to a boy in February 1967. She named him Paul.
“From the moment I held him in my arms for the first time, the love I felt for him then was unbelievable,” she says. “I didn’t think I would feel like that. And I knew I had to part with him. So I wanted not to feel like that.”
Paula movingly recounts the moment when she had to leave Paul with a temporary foster mother just three days after he was born.
“I was talking to him all the time,” she says. “I was saying ‘I hope somehow or other you know the mother who brought you into this world loves you so much, and that she’s doing this for you. Just remember my voice. Please remember my voice. I love you, my son, always.’”
Paula says she lights a candle in church every year on Paul’s birthday and prays to be able to find him one day.
“I can’t ever expect love, but just knowing, seeing him, touching him perhaps – his hand – and knowing that he’s always been loved, for me that’s everything,” she says.
The Long Lost Family team discovered Paul’s name had been changed to Jim, and traced him living in the southwest. Jim is a former psychiatric nurse who now works from home and enjoys growing his own vegetables.
It took Jim several months to decide whether he wanted contact with his birth mother, but he now says he wants to meet.
“I really want it to happen, and I couldn’t have said that a few weeks ago because I didn’t know what I thought,” he says. “But I’m really looking forward to it… It’s something I never thought would happen. It’s the biggest thing I’ll probably ever do in my life.”
In the other story of the episode, Davina McCall meets 54-year-old Sharon Thomas from the West Midlands. Sharon’s mother Margaret had her when she was just sixteen, but died of leukaemia four years later. Sharon was brought up by her grandparents, Annie and William. After her grandmother died when she was an adult, her grandfather told her that she had a younger brother, who’d been adopted.
“It was a massive shock,” Sharon says. “As soon as I found out, the overwhelming feeling was that I needed to find him.”
Sharon has her brother’s original birth certificate, which says his name was Dean. After he was adopted, his name was changed to Craig Knight. The Long Lost Family team track him down living just twenty miles away from Sharon.
Craig says he had a good upbringing with his adopted parents, but has always wanted to find out more about his birth family. He found out his birth mother died when he was eighteen, and was upset that he never had a chance to know her. He’s shocked to find out that he has a sister.
Paula Beer is overjoyed to hear that her son has been found and wants to meet her.
“He’s lovely! He’s gorgeous!” she says when she sees a photo of Jim. “I love him already!”
She’s even happier when she and Jim finally meet. Jim tells her that she gave him the best start in life, as she wanted to do. He’s also pleased to find out that he’s Welsh.
“I just met my son and I am ecstatic,” Paula says. “There’s no other word for it. I am over the moon. I feel a bond, I feel love. He’s exactly what I hoped he’d be.”
Sharon and Craig are also very pleased to finally meet.
“I just hope now we can build on this bond we’ve found,” Sharon says. “We can share some important times.”
Craig agrees: “It’s like we’re connected now. Nothing’s going to separate that, because we are blood.”