Lost And Found’s second chance

Lost and Found is known for its teary meetings between family members who have never met or have spent decades apart. But what about when a person seeking a birth parent or a half-sibling doesn’t meet anyone? For the latest season of Lost and Found, presenter David Lomas is following up on one of these anti-climactic stories.

Viewers may recall the case of Kate Sherriff who was adopted in 1970 in England, raised in Australia and lived in Southland, New Zealand, with her husband and children.

She had made contact with her birth mother and was keen to meet her birth father, a man she believed was a naval engineer. This man had a relationship with Sherriff’s birth mother when she worked as an au pair in the United States, before returning home to England.

David Lomas tracked down the naval engineer who was living in Minneapolis. The man was kind and helpful but his partner suggested he do a DNA test. It turned out he was not Sherriff’s birth father.

It transpired Sherriff’s birth mother had a one-night stand which resulted in a pregnancy. Worse news was to come.

Lomas tracked down the man he believed was Kate’s real birth father.

‘‘I rang him up and he denied everything,’’ says Lomas.

Sherriff was devastated to discover she wasn’t the product of a loving relationship. Lomas says telling Kate was awful. ‘‘You don’t take someone halfway across the world and then stand there and tell them: I’m sorry we’ve brought you here. Your dad is not your dad and the guy who we think is, doesn’t want to know you.’’

Since making that episode a few years ago, Lomas has stayed in touch with Sherriff. ‘‘There [have been] a whole lot of twists and turns in Kate’s life in the meantime,’’ he says.

Lomas won’t be drawn on the specifics of Sherriff’s story this season except to say: ‘‘We revisit that story and try to set things right. What happens is quite magical.’’

Lomas says the stories in the

upcoming season are ‘‘just as good as all the rest’’.

‘‘Again there are so many diverse stories and so many really emotional ones. This time we go all over the place again. We’ve been to Canada, Australia, Scotland, Russia, England . . . They are great stories.’’

Lomas admits he gets emotionally involved with the stories he tells.

‘‘You wouldn’t do a programme like this unless you did feel some connection and some empathy with what people are doing,’’ he says.

‘‘But on camera I make a fairly clear line that it’s not about me and I try to stay a little bit aloof.

‘‘But when reunions happen, fortunately the camera is always on the people getting reunited. It doesn’t see what I’m doing which is often a little bit of emotion there because you’ve taken people on an amazing journey and, as viewers at home are seeing, you’re seeing something that’s pretty magic.’’

Lost and Found is the successor to Missing Pieces, a similar show in which Lomas meets people seeking answers and family connections.

He has met a variety of people from doing these two programmes. But apart from Sherriff, does he stay in touch with the people whose stories he tells? ‘‘Yes, lots of them,’’ he says. ‘‘We had one the other day with a guy I found in Ecuador six or seven years ago. He’s just flown to New Zealand to see his daughter. So I went round and had a cup of tea with them.’’

This is the final season of Lost and Found but Lomas, a journalist with more than 40 years’ experience, isn’t about to disappear from our screens.

‘‘We’ve got a new series coming up called David Lomas Investigates and we’re looking to do investigations, finding people, solving mysteries, but we’re looking for things which are just a bit more complicated I suppose,’’ he says. ‘‘Like for instance, we’d love to track down a refugee and find out what their background was.’’ – Sarah Nealon, TV-Guide

Lost and Found, Three, 7.30pm, Tuesdays from today.