Mark Stuckey, an expert on The Repair Shop, confessed it was "nerve-wracking" as he tackled a moving restoration project. The BBC star was tasked with fixing a broken projector that held unseen home movies of a brother and sister who had lost both of their parents.
As he tried to mend the equipment during the latest episode, he said: "So it's a little bit nerve-wracking, but at some stage you've got to do that plunge. It's like being on the top of a diving board - you're just not ready to go, but you have got to throw yourself off."
Emotional reunion with lost memories
Siblings Zaff and Nasari brought the broken projector to the show. They explained that their father had recorded footage of them as youngsters with relatives during their upbringing in Uganda. However, after they were forced to flee the country in the 1970s under Idi Amin's regime, it was packed away and left untouched.
Both of their parents had since passed away. Zaff and Nasari told Mark and Dominic Chinea that they hoped repairing the projector would allow them to see their parents "walking around" once more.
Zaff shared how they had a "very fun" time growing up but also spoke about the "trauma" of having to leave Africa along with over 70,000 others, after military dictator Amin seized control of Uganda and ordered the mass expulsion of the country's Asian population.
Projector restored, tears of joy
Thankfully, Mark managed to get the mechanism working, revealing footage of the siblings' mother, father and grandfather. "There's undoubtedly loads and loads of memories here," he said as he viewed some of the reels. "I'm really looking forward for them, for the first time, to see their past in the present."
Zaff and Nasari were emotional when they returned to the barn and were thrilled to see that there was film on the projector. Both looked tearful as they viewed old footage showing their grandfather at his factory and their mother waving at the camera.
Nasari said it made her feel at "peace", while her brother added: "And to see all the faces that we've never seen for God knows how many years, on the screen. Astonishing."
The Repair Shop airs on BBC One.
