It's amazing and a blessing'

Siblings David McBride and Helen Ward – both foundlings – on how Long Lost Family has changed their lives

- IAN MACEWAN

LONG LOST FAMILY: BORN WITHOUT TRACE

NEW MON & TUE / ITV / 9PM / EPS 1-2 of 2 / REAL LIFE

Born six years apart, in 1960s Ireland, foundlings David McBride and Helen Ward spent years independently searching for their birth parents, who abandoned them as babies.

To their amazement, they each found out they had a full sibling that they’d never known about when a DNA database matched them as brother and sister.

Their astonishing story is told in the first of a new two-part series of Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace, which includes their emotional first meeting with the support of presenters Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell.

Here, David, 58, and Helen, 52, tell TV Times more…

How much did you know about where you came from?

HELEN: I was told quite early as a child that I was adopted, but I never really took it on board until I was eight or nine, when one of my cousins commented on it. From then on, I questioned it more. But it was only in 2003 that I discovered from a social worker that I was a foundling.

DAVID: I didn’t know much until I went to the Belfast family court in 1969 and my parents explained that I was adopted. When I went to join the military, I needed my birth certificate, and my parents told me more about what had gone on. I didn’t even know what the word ‘foundling’ meant until that point!

Can you describe the feeling of living without having the answers you needed?