PICK OF TODAY’S TV LONG LOST FAMILY SPECIAL: SWITCHED AT BIRTH, 9PM, ITV

LONG LOST FAMILY has now been on our screens for a remarkable 11 years, and has reunited hundreds of estranged siblings, children and parents over its 11 series — and every case has taken us on an emotional journey. But, ahead of the start of a new run of regular episodes next week, this special features a first in the history of the show. It’s the incredible story of 77-year-old Rosemary Rawlins (pictured with Davina McCall), who always suspected that she may have been accidentally ‘switched’ as a baby, while her family were taking refuge in an air raid shelter in Weymouth during the Second World War. When DNA evidence confirms Rosemary’s suspicions, she turns to Davina and Nicky Campbell to help to find her real family, and to meet the girl with whom she was switched. It’s a complex case, and one that raises some deeply thoughtprovoking questions for all involved. Rosemary’s situation is almost without precedent, but we do also hear of another remarkable instance of babies switched at birth. Gisella Fodera and Marinella Alagna, from Sicily, discovered that they had been raising each other’s daughters for three years following a terrible error at the hospital — and in a heart-warming twist, the two mothers decided to raise the girls together as sisters.