Kate Adie (b. 1945) was adopted as a baby. She studied at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and then began work at the BBC. By 1976 she was working as a journalist, covering major stories such as the Gulf War, the 1994 Rwandan genocide and, earlier, the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. Kate Adie retired in 2003 and has since worked as a freelance journalist and host of a document series on starting out life as a foundling.