Episode 13 Family Finders

Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

I had no information at all about where my mum went.

And when you do lose touch with your loved ones...

You don't know who you are, where you've come from.

..finding them can take a lifetime...

I might have a brother that's still living here.

..especially when they could be anywhere, at home or abroad.

And that's where the Family Finders come in.

From international organisations...

Hi, it's the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service.

..to genealogy detective agencies...

For someone to say that it's changed their life,

it makes coming to work, you know, really, really special.

..and dedicated one-man bands...

It's a matter of how much effort do you really want to put into it,

how badly you want to solve the problem.

..they hunt through history to bring families back together again.

Finding new family is wonderful.

In this series, we follow the work of the Family Finders...

Suddenly, you get that one spark of breakthrough and there they are.

..learning the tricks they use

to track missing relatives through time...

No, I didn't think I would ever find sisters, but I have.

..and meeting the people whose lives they change along the way.

I've been waiting to meet John my whole life.

Since we've met, I feel part of a family again.

You just completed my life for me.

Every year, thousands of people in the UK

begin looking for long-lost family members.

No two searches are ever quite the same.

Sometimes, a search will throw up unexpected results

and often, it takes something unexpected to happen

in order for a search to succeed.

Today, we follow a hunt for long-lost siblings

that had all but failed

until a chance conversation changed everything.

She said, "Tess, I need to talk to you."

And I thought, "Whatever has happened?"

She said, "I think I know your half-sister."

And we meet the man who,

while searching for records of his mother,

discovered something that would change his life forever.

I stood behind him and I just tapped him on the shoulder

and I said to him, "Where have you been all my life?"

Tessa Dulman and her sister, Jan, live in the West Country.

Along with their brother, Cecil,

they were raised in Bath and Somerset

by William Hart, a violinist, and their mother, Paulina.

Well, I was born in 1940, the beginning of the war.

-Tess was born...

-1945.

-1945.

They grew up in a warm and loving household,

but their contented childhood was shattered

when their beloved father's health suddenly deteriorated.

When I was about nine, he got very ill, I remember.

-One day, we drove him to Frenchay Hospital.

-I was...

15, I think, and that was a shock because he was at home

and then three days later, he was dead.

Terribly sad when Daddy died and I can remember it, you know,

vividly. And Mummy really had to work very hard after that.

She was a secretary and I think times were quite tough

and she was extremely good to us.

The sudden death of their father from cancer rocked

the sisters' lives and there was more shocking news to come.

A good friend of mine said to me, like a bombshell,

"Did you know your mum and dad were divorced?"

And I said, "That's rubbish."

She said, "No, they were. They were divorced."

I found it strange that they were divorced

but living together in the same house.

But I accepted it cos you do accept things.

But that wasn't the only revelation about their father

that came to light.

My mother said to me, "You actually have a half-brother

"and sister, twins," which I was completely amazed.

It sort of stuck in my mind and it was really never mentioned again.

Tessa and Jan's parents were still living

together despite being divorced.

At the same time, their father was having a relationship with

a fellow musician called Rosemary.

She was to bear him a twin son and daughter,

babies he would never meet due to his untimely death.

It came to my mind a lot about my half-brother and sister,

but with my mother, obviously still alive, there was

no way I would want to, you know, go any further.

But some years later, after their brother had emigrated to America

and their mother had died, the sisters decided to do some digging.

We were looking in phone books...

I looked in the phone book and I thought, "Well, that's ridiculous.

"It's highly unlikely they are down here."

After a brief but unsuccessful search,

the sisters stopped looking for the twins.

But somebody else had got the bit between their teeth.

Tess' husband, Alan, was intrigued by the family history

and decided to carry out some secret research of his own.

I knew that they weren't born before he died

and I knew that he had died in December 1954.

So, initially, I kind of had an nine-month window in 1955

that they were going to be born sometime.

Alan began his search at the local register office.

I knew they were twins.

There weren't that many twins born in that period in Bath.

Their mother, we knew lived in the Larkhall area of Bath,

so I found them quite quickly.

After this breakthrough,

Alan brought his secret search out into the open.

He broke the news to Tessa and Jan that he had found

a record of his half-brother and sister's births.

And then we saw the names, so that made it really quite real then.

We thought, "Oh, my God." But then we didn't know

where they were or anything about it, did we?

Could have been anywhere.

The twins' birth certificates revealed their full names.

Christopher William Theodore Hart and Jennifer Diane Hart,

which meant Alan could move his search right up to the present day.

I thought, "Well, the best route to find them would really be

"to look for Christopher,"

because, hopefully, his surname will still be Hart.

Then I went on the electoral register and got the postcode

and I said to Tess, "Well, I could probably get the address,

"but what do we do? Knock on the door and say,

" 'Hello, Chris. I'm your half-sister.' " You can't do that.

Because you don't know whether they know anything about us.

The postcode they found was in Bristol,

just a few miles away from where Alan and Tessa live.

However, the sisters couldn't decide how to go about making

the next move.

But could fate be about to take that decision out of their hands?

-Who would have thought this would have happened?

-Yeah, I know.

It is so bizarre, isn't it?

CRYING

For most people, having family around us

is something we take for granted,

but for some, growing up completely alone is a reality.

78-year-old Fred O'Donnell has lived in Bradford for 52 years.

Here, he has raised his own happy family,

including daughters Theresa and Patricia.

But the story of his own upbringing couldn't be more different.

It began in Ireland in the 1940s.

My dad, at the age of 15 months, was taken

to Eccles Street Orphanage by his grandmother.

They held him there for a few weeks till they found a foster parent

and then he was boarded out to four different people

over four years.

And the last one wasn't looking after him correctly.

And that's when he was found on the streets of Dublin

and taken to the court

and charged with receiving alms, which is basically begging.

Judge said, "I will sentence you to eight years.

"That's your sentence for begging."

At the age of eight, Fred was sent Artane Industrial School,

which housed boys up to the age of 14,

often sent there for minor offences.

It was run by a Roman Catholic congregation called

the Christian Brothers.

800 or 900 children there and, you know,

various different ages, but very strict.

Bed early and up early in the morning.

And hail, rain or snow, 6.30 in the morning.

-And you still get up at 6.30 in the morning.

-I do, yeah.

-Hm.

-Hm.

The school operated from 1870 to 1969

and was notorious for its tough regime.

You got a number and my number was 12198

and I've always told that to my children,

but, you know, they never believed me

until some paperwork came through and I saw it on there, 12198.

It's like being in an army or in a jail.

And that number will stick to me to the rest of my days.

-12198.

-You were known as 12198, not Fred.

Yeah. 12198. They didn't call you by your name, you were a number.

In 2009, an investigation launched by the Irish government

published the Ryan report.

It revealed accounts of systematic neglect and abuse

within schools like Artane.

Christian Brothers were hard in them days, very hard.

You didn't really think anything about life, you just...carry on.

That's the way life is.

And carry on Fred did,

until, at the age of 16, he was allowed to leave the institution

and make his own way in the world.

Leaving the school was the best days of my life.

Glad to get out of it after eight years.

Fred worked on a farm in Ireland for a few years

then emigrated to England.

In 1963, settled in Bradford,

had a family

and they are grown-up, they have children of their own.

I felt very happy because I didn't know any of my own parents,

which was nice to have a family of your own.

Everything worked out as happy as I wanted it.

But there was always something missing.

Fred wanted to know more about his mother.

And his daughter Theresa was more than happy to help.

The reason why I started doing all this is

my dad is a very shy person.

He's not, obviously, computer literate with things

and I really wanted it for my dad.

The first thing she did was apply for his birth certificate.

Born Pelletstown, County Dublin.

And it says my mother's name,

which was Julia O'Donnell

and father's name not stated.

Probably because she was outside of wedlock, I don't know.

They had Fred's mother's name,

but when Theresa tried to trace Julia O'Donnell, she drew a blank

until a chance encounter gave her a hot new lead.

In April 2013,

I went into hospital to have an operation

and the porter was an Irish man. And, as you do, you get talking.

He was asking about my dad

and I explained that he was in Artane Industrial School,

born in a mother-and-baby home.

And he gave me some groups on social networking sites

to get in touch with.

I did that and a lady got in touch with me

and she has helped us tremendously.

Got loads of documents and then actually found out through

the Magdalene Research Project that my nan was in a Magdalene laundry.

In 1942, while Fred was put into the orphanage,

his mum, Julia, was sent to a Catholic-run institution

for so-called fallen women -

a Magdalene laundry.

These notorious homes were widespread in Ireland

from the 18th to the late 20th centuries.

An estimated 30,000 women were confined in them.

They did laundry for the prisons,

and all the laundry was done by hand, no machines.

Were there from crack of dawn, late at night and even

when they were heavily pregnant, they were still in the laundries.

Until the day they gave birth, they were in the laundry,

washing by hand.

They never got paid for doing these jobs.

Some of the women were so institutionalised

that they remained doing hard labour in the laundries all their lives.

And Julia's death certificate revealed she was one of them.

She was in there from an early age and never came out of it.

Just because she had had a baby, was unmarried.

It just doesn't seem feasible that there are places like this.

The last Magdalene laundry closed in 1996

and that's not that long ago.

The research also revealed a final resting place for Fred's mother.

When I went to see the grave for the very first time, it was sad.

We let my dad go on his own

and he put his hand on top of the grave and said, "Hello, Mum."

And that was just it, me and my sister just broke down.

Just to see my dad visiting his mum for the first time, heartbreaking.

You don't want to see your parents go through that at all.

-You don't want to wish anybody to go through that, really.

-No.

The headstone was inscribed with the name Frances O'Donnell,

which explained why Fred's mum had been so difficult to trace.

When she was in the Magdalene home,

they changed her name from Julia to Frances.

And that could never be taken off the headstone.

That's what they did with the ladies of the laundries,

when they went in, they stripped them of their identities,

of all the past life. That's their punishment.

"You're not that same person now. You are in our charge."

Very emotional. Very sad.

I didn't think I would ever see the day that I would see the grave,

you know?

But I had a few tears.

Fred, at last, had some answers about what had happened in his early

years, but the research had thrown up another incredible revelation.

A bit shocked to find out there's another

member of the O'Donnell family somewhere lurking around.

Fred's quest to find his family wasn't over yet.

I've been searching for three years,

just can't believe how it's come to this.

Unlike Fred, sisters Tessa and Jan have known

they had half-siblings, but they knew very little else about them.

Their search had revealed their names, Jennifer and Christopher.

They had even turned up a possible address for their half-brother

just a few miles away in Bristol.

There the search had stalled as the sisters couldn't decide how

or even if they should make contact.

You can't do that because you don't know

whether they know anything about us.

That was until Tessa received a bolt from the blue.

I had a phone call from a really close friend of mine, Jane,

and she said, "Tess, I'm going to take you to lunch.

"I need to talk to." So we went out to lunch,

she said, "Now, take it easy. Take a sip of wine." She said,

"I think I know your half-sister."

And I just stared at her and I said, "Well, what do you mean?"

And she said, "Well, look, I've known you for 30 years

"and I've know Jenny, not so well, but I've known her for 20 years."

Jenny and Tessa that not only had a mutual friend,

they also shared a maiden name, Hart.

So, she said, "I was at a garden party." I think Jane said,

"Oh, is Hart a Bath name?" And Jenny said, "Well, I don't know.

"I think so. Why do you ask?"

And she said, "Because my great friend is Tess Hart."

And she said Jenny did a double take.

She said she will never forget Jenny's face.

And she said, "I was driving home and I was thinking,

" 'Why was Jenny looking at me like that?' "

And she said, "I suddenly thought, 'Oh, my God, I think

" 'somewhere along the line, Tessa said she had a half-sister.' "

And she thought, "Well, it couldn't possibly be Jenny.

"Because Tessa said they were twins."

She said, "By the time I got home,

"I thought, 'My God, she's got a twin brother!'"

Jenny did indeed have a twin brother called Christopher

who lived in Bristol.

They too were aware that they had long-lost siblings

who, after that chance conversation at a garden party,

no longer seemed quite so lost.

The penny dropped and I thought,

"Wow, this is more than coincidence."

And I was so excited, but I didn't let on,

but inside, I was just bubbling over.

So, I phoned Jan and said, "You are never going to believe this."

And Jan said, "Well, it may not be her."

And I phoned my brother and he said,

"That's too much of a coincidence."

There was only one way to make sure.

Their mutual friend arranged a meeting between Jenny and Tessa.

I was watching from the conservatory and I saw this car pull up

and this lady get out and I felt so emotional. I thought,

"She looks like my father."

So, of course, I was shaking, absolutely shaking.

I went round with a picture of our father...

..and knocked on the door and Tessa answered...

We sat down and she got her handbag

and she took a photograph out

and said, "This was my daddy who died before I was born."

And she handed it to me and it was my father.

So you can imagine what actually went on. Terrible scene.

And she burst into tears and then I burst into tears.

It was just tears all the way.

We just were hugging each other

and just couldn't believe it.

60 years ago, Jenny and Chris's mother, Rosemary, had

met their father, William,

fallen in love and fallen pregnant with twins.

They didn't know she was having twins,

so I came first and then they said,

-"Oh, my God, there's another one."

-Yeah.

And then Christopher came later.

But their father would never get to see his youngest children.

Our father died before we were born, about three months,

so we were primarily brought up by my mother and my grandmother.

To find that you're a widow and you have twins,

you have no money,

you must be feeling displaced and you've lost the person you love.

What kind of future can you actually look forward to?

Their mother worked a string of jobs to support them,

but money was tight.

Our mother was struggling.

Each day was really difficult, she had to take any

jobs that she could find.

She worked in the builder's yard as a receptionist at one point. She...

..made curtains and did upholstery at home.

Actually, she worked in the betting office at one time.

Despite working hard, Rosemary struggled to make ends meet.

My very first memory was actually Mum having to sell

the violins and the cellos in order to support us.

She was always concerned that even if

we didn't have any of the materialistic things, that we were

sort of going to be well-rounded and loved and sort of...

and looked after.

However, growing up in a single-parent family

in the 1950s and '60s was undoubtedly tough.

I certainly felt the stigma.

My grandmother sometimes would take us to school

and I didn't like being taken...

I wanted to have a father to take me to school.

-I was bullied a lot.

-Yeah.

Erm...because we didn't have a father.

Because we couldn't afford to go on school trips and things like that

and because we had a grandmother living with us.

School life wasn't particularly pleasant for me, I must say.

Rosemary was determined that Chris and Jenny

would never forget their father, William.

It's very sad to know that we...

you know, our father had died of course and we never knew him

but our mother did keep his spirit alive...

..by taking us to places where they used to go.

Showing us photographs.

They both played the violin together

and that's how they were...first met or introduced.

Music wasn't in our lives until we were five

and Mum explained that that was a grieving process for her.

So we didn't really...

..know more about that until much later.

Then when she started to come out of the grief...

..it was very special and music was just in our lives all the time then.

Their mother spent years mourning the memory of their father

but she had always been honest with her children about his other family.

Our mother explained that we had another brother and two sisters

but she didn't know a huge amount as to where they lived

or what they were doing.

The only information I ever knew

was that there was a possibility that all three lived in America.

I remember that there was a Theresa and a Janice and a Cecil

but we didn't know where.

And of course in the '50s they didn't talk about it really.

I don't think she knew too much anyway about his previous marriage.

I think she would have struggled trying to give us a larger picture.

And also, I didn't want to feel as if I was being disloyal towards her

by wanting to know more about my other brothers and sisters.

So...

It only really happened in our adult life that Jenny and I

would start to talk about it and go, "I wonder where they are?"

It intrigued me, I must say. It really did.

I was fascinated and it was like a jigsaw puzzle.

There were a lot of missing pieces.

Now, thanks to a passing comment at a garden party,

the 60-year-old family jigsaw has finally been completed.

And after Tessa and Jenny's initial meeting,

all four of them got together for the first time.

Tessa and I organised meeting in Bath with Janice, with Jan,

and Chris.

We met in Bath and that was quite an experience too,

to see our other sister.

It's just so strange to think that is my half sister.

I never dreamt that this would happen.

Never dreamt that we'd meet them, quite honestly.

And they've been so warm and so welcoming.

We were shouting and screaming and whooping, you know.

-Jenny was overwhelmed for months.

-Yes, I was.

I'm far more of a cooler customer.

And he was gobsmacked.

I think he took a long time to get to grips with it all.

-Yeah.

-And the funny thing was,

the three of us were in identical clothes.

-White trousers, white sandals and floral tops.

-Floral tops.

A year after finding each other,

today marks another very significant occasion

for the four half-siblings.

They are meeting to make a special visit

to the grave of the father they all share.

It'll be the first time they have all been there together

and for Jenny, it will be her first visit ever.

I think Mum didn't take me because she knew I'd get upset

and get emotional and then we'd both be very emotional.

Who would have thought this would have happened?

-It's so bizarre, isn't it?

-I know.

So this time, well, 18 months ago...

-We didn't know them.

-..it just wasn't going on, was it?

Today, I'm really excited.

It's been a while since I've seen the two sisters.

I think the last time, the only time, I went to my father's grave

was when I was in my late teens and so it's been a long time.

I'm very excited about meeting up with the girls again.

Hello!

Oh, gosh!

-Lovely to see you.

-And you.

-You look really well.

-And you, of course.

But before they visit their father's grave,

there's time to exchange some very special family memories.

Jenny's brought a gift that their father once gave to her mother.

I've brought something to show you. I hadn't shown you before

because I felt it was a little bit on the sensitive side.

But I thought you'd love to see them, so...

Oh, my goodness.

So there's that little one.

Oh, that's quite beautiful, isn't it?

And those are our daddy's words.

-JAN:

-Oh, that's his writing OK, isn't it? "Always love you."

"Magic is in your soul."

"In your soul." "You are the loveliest of all."

-Oh, Daddy.

-It's very sad.

-Right, we have got a few photographs here.

-OK.

We have...

That's our dear mother with Cecil there.

Oh, she's beautiful.

That definitely looks like me.

There's Daddy...and Mummy.

Gosh, look at him.

He's got a lot more weight on him there

than some of the pictures we've got, I think.

-You've got later ones, you say?

-Yeah.

The first time we saw him together, eh?

Yes.

And there's Daddy.

-JAN:

-Are you all right?

-OK?

-Yeah.

Oh, Dad.

It's quite sad, isn't it, Jan?

SNIFFLING

-JENNY SOBS

-Come here.

-What's so sad, I think...

-SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY

A few memories.

-At least I've got them...

-Yeah, exactly.

-..now for you and Jenny.

So there we are, Dad.

We've all finally made it.

-JAN AND TESSA:

-Yeah.

I used to come here quite a bit and there would be flowers on the grave.

They were lovely yellow roses

and we didn't know who was putting them on there

but of course now we realise it was your mum.

Yeah, that's right because she loved yellow roses as well, so that's a...

Yeah.

After searching for each other for over 20 years,

Jenny, Chris, Tessa and Jan are united in memory of their father.

There's a part of me that really wishes we could have met him,

really could have had some memory of him

cos it clearly comes across

how kind he was and how much of a gentle person he was.

And...

Sorry.

All of us have taken great value out of going through this process today.

It was very powerful for me, the emotions.

One, cos I had never seen it before.

To see his name and to have our siblings all together

was just truly wonderful.

I think Daddy would have been really happy that we've found each other.

And the four of us standing there, it was just lovely. Just lovely.

THEY CHAT

Fred O'Donnell spent his childhood

in various Irish institutions for boys in the 1940s.

He'd been searching for the mother he never knew.

Fred had discovered she'd been confined

in one of the Magdalene laundries,

notorious homes for so-called fallen women.

He had also found out that she had died in 1996.

But documents received as part of the investigation

had revealed an interesting detail.

Fred wasn't his mother, Julia's, only child.

She had given birth to another baby three years before Fred,

in the Bethany mother-and-child home in Dublin.

The paperwork said there was a girl, so we were a bit shocked at that

to find out there's another member of the O'Donnell family

somewhere lurking around.

And we got in touch with somebody from the Bethany Home.

He did research and said, "No, it's not a girl.

"It's a boy and he's called Jimmy."

And you're working out their ages and you think,

"Could there be a possibility he's still alive?"

Helped by his daughter Theresa,

they managed to establish that his brother, Jimmy, was still alive

and that he too had left Ireland for England.

I contacted a department in Ireland,

it's like our National Insurance department.

They had an address for him but living in England.

But because of data protection, which I can understand,

they would not give me his address.

We were so near but yet so far.

If they could just give us the town,

I could have done a search that way, you know?

That's all the little thing I needed.

The search had ground to a halt.

The family's last throw of the dice was to appeal to the public

and finally they got a call.

It wasn't long-lost uncle Jimmy

but it was a family finding company who thought they could help.

Caseworker Amy Littlechild took up the search and found a ray of hope.

We contacted a government body

to see if they had any information on James.

They came back to us saying that the result was positive

and that they'd potentially found a match.

So what we did is we asked them if they could forward on a letter

for us, in the hope that James would make contact.

It's hard doing the search to try and trace someone

but it's even worse with the long wait of knowing that your letter

has been sent to them but waiting for them to make contact with you.

It's always a little bit gruelling

knowing that they're out there somewhere

and they could potentially in the next couple of days

be speaking with you on the phone.

But in this instance, they didn't have to wait long for a response.

I received an e-mail.

I was at work, I opened the e-mail and it said,

"We've found your dad's brother."

I couldn't quite believe what I was reading.

He works in a bar in Cheltenham and I thought,

"80 years of age working in a bar?

"Mmm, this is...

"I think they've got the wrong person here, surely, 80 years."

But, no, he works in a bar.

Theresa couldn't wait to break the news to her dad.

She said, "I've got some news for you." And I said, "What is it?"

She said, "We've found him." I said, "Found who?"

She said, "We've found your brother."

And again...

It's grand to know that at least I have someone in my life

you know, apart from my own family and stuff like that.

But thinking that maybe I would never have anyone belong to me.

Theresa was the first to make contact with Fred's brother, Jimmy.

I was working away in the pub and the bar manager said,

"Oh, Jimmy, there's a phone call for you.

"They're people from up the north."

I said, "I know nobody from up the north."

And certainly these people told me who they were.

"And we've been looking for you, Jimmy, for the last two years."

I said, "Hello?

"Can I call you Uncle Jimmy?

And he said, "Sure you can."

Well, I'll tell you the honest truth, I was jumping over the moon.

I was so happy and I said, "Oh, good.

"It's good to know I've got somebody belong to me."

That's what I said.

I have to admit, I did shed a few tears.

Jimmy was born three years before Fred in a mother-and-baby home.

But as a toddler, he was put into an orphanage called Ovoca Manor

in southern Ireland.

When they put me into the orphan home I often asked,

"Well, where's my mother and father?"

And I was never, never told.

There was no respect.

We used to have good times and good singing

and we had three meals a day.

So, in that sense, we were all right.

But sometimes, if we got out of control, we knew about it.

I have to admit that.

And we didn't get off with it light either.

We all worked hard in the manor.

We used to do all the cleaning, the avenues and the garden as well

and the greenhouse. And look after the cattle as well.

Jimmy left the orphanage and moved to England by himself aged just 16.

Not having a family, sometimes I cried my eyes out

because I used to say,

"Jimmy, they you are in the world all by yourself.

"Nowhere to turn to."

I've never looked back on anybody to support me or anything.

I always did it myself.

I never married because I found out that women are too expensive.

I just said, "Jimmy, stay single."

I would like to have a family, yeah.

But it's never happened.

By 1972, Jimmy had been in England for 27 years.

That year, he returned to Ireland for a reunion with his mother,

arranged by his orphanage.

By this time, Julia had been in the Magdalene laundry for 33 years.

I only met my mother once and she said to me,

"I'm sorry, Jimmy, but you're not allowed to visit me in the convent.

"I'm under very strict orders."

And that was the last time I saw her.

There wasn't a warm welcome or anything there.

I said to myself, "Well, if I'm not allowed to go and visit, Jimmy,

"forget about it."

That was it.

Jimmy returned to his life in England,

oblivious that he had a brother who would go on to track him down

all those years later.

So, they made it their business to come down and see me.

They made a date and they came down and we had a wonderful reunion.

At first, a bit wary because you don't know, after 80 years,

I mean, he's 80 and I thought,

"Now, what do you say to a person like that?"

So we met up and I stood behind him

and I just tapped him on the shoulder and I said to him,

"Where have you been all my life?"

That broke the ice and we were quite happy.

I knew nothing about him and he knew nothing about me,

so we've collided and that's it.

We're glad to get together.

Before Jimmy met his new family,

holidays and celebrations could be a little bleak.

When it comes up to Christmas, sometimes I do without it.

But this year, Fred and Theresa are organising a special celebration

so that Jimmy can experience his very first

O'Donnell family Christmas.

Fred and his daughters, Theresa and Patricia,

have travelled from Bradford to Cheltenham.

I wonder how Uncle Jimmy is this morning.

-Excited for his Christmas dinner.

-Yeah.

Number one, top of the world.

'Absolutely feeling excited with the family coming.'

-How are you feeling?

-Oh, I'm feeling all right. Top of the morning.

THEY LAUGH

Excited for the first Christmas.

I'm not nervous at all.

I'm just looking forward to the family coming.

And I'm sitting down to a lovely lunch.

This will be a good Christmas.

It'll be the best Christmas I think I ever had.

Do you know, it seems more emotional, I think,

than the first time we met him.

It probably will be, yeah.

It was worthwhile living this year

and to meet them.

Now you know that you have someone belong to you now,

a family now.

-Hello.

-Hello!

-How are you? Are you all right?

-Yeah, are you?

-Yeah. Good to see.

-It's good to see you.

-All right?

-Yeah, fine.

-That's good.

And look at these two.

-How are you?

-Good to see you.

-It's good to see.

It's good to see you.

-PATRICIA:

-How are you?

I'm great. Excited that you've come here today.

Woohoo! Woohoo!

-Get yourself sat down.

-SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY

A nice Christmas together, Uncle Jimmy.

Merry Christmas to you all.

And to you.

Oh, here we are. Wha-hey!

Thank you.

It's taken 80 years

but Jimmy can finally enjoy Christmas lunch with his family.

-Ready?

-One, two...

-THEY CHEER

Christmas is not Christmas without a hat, Uncle Jimmy.

-There you go, sweetheart.

-Thank you.

Anyway, Jimmy, this is your first Christmas dinner.

-That's right, yeah.

-Together as brothers.

-Yeah, looking forward to it.

-Lovely, isn't it?

Let's hope we have many more to come.

-I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

-Good.

I just want to wish everybody a merry Christmas,

-a happy new year...

-Happy new year!

-..and lots more...

-Merry Christmas!

-Merry Christmas, Uncle Jimmy.

-..lots more Christmases together.

And these brothers aren't just back together for Christmas,

they're back together for life.

-Are you going to go over to Ireland again, are you?

-Of course I am.

We'll all go together next year. We'll take you. Yeah?

-Yeah and...people over there.

-We'll have a family holiday.

-No chasing the women now.

-Oh, yes, plenty...

Oh, no, no, no, no. You're not getting us locked up.

- Keep away from the women.

All right.

-Now then, big brother.

-Amen.

-Amen.

Thank you.

And today, there's another first for the brothers.

This is your first Christmas present from your little brother...

-Yeah?

-..in your 80 years...

Oh, good.

-Open that.

-..so you have to open this one.

Oh, yes!

That keeps in my brain.

-That keeps your brains in.

-Keeps in my brain.

Oh. "A marvellous brother who deserves a wish or two."

-Of course you do.

-LAUGHTER

"To my big brother..."

Big? Oh, I didn't think I was big.

LAUGHTER

-Oh, yes.

-Come on, brother.

Oh, yeah.

Whaa-hey!

You've got to wear it sideways.

-Yours is on the straight side.

-That's right.

-You've got to wear it on the side.

-Oh, yes.

Like two leprechauns.

They just need a fishing rod.

Do you know, speaking of Christmas, when you have people over,

family all together, the other Christmases that have gone by,

to be quite honest with you, you might as well not be alive.

-Yeah.

-All right.

I've often said it a couple of times.

But just think, you've got the old man here now, haven't you?

-Yeah.

-How does that feel?

-Oh, it's great, isn't it?

-Yeah.

It's great, it really is.

I just can't believe how it has come to this.

I've been searching for three years. We're all together.

Nothing will ever stop that.

I won't go astray.

No, we're not going to let you.

Today may be drawing to a close but Jimmy and Fred are just starting

a new chapter of their lives...as brothers.

-Beautiful day, isn't it, Jimmy?

-Yeah, beautiful day.

We're very thankful for that.

Let your hair down today. Yeah.

-It couldn't be any better.

-No, it couldn't have been better.

My goodness, no.

'You can't mistake that they're brothers.'

-Not only in looks but...

-The mannerisms, everything.

The mannerisms. They're just... They're like two peas in a pod.

Yeah, we are definitely brothers, ain't we, James?

-Yeah, we're brothers.

-We're definitely brothers in blood.

-And forever.

-Yeah.

Stick together forever.

-PATRICIA:

-I just hope that anybody else

-that's going through what we've gone through...

-Stick at it.

Stick at it and don't back down

because the outcome is like what we've had today.

-FRED:

-I did get worried I was going to give it up at one point

but we carried on and in the end we got him.

-That's right, yeah.

-Best day of my life.