The mother of Madeleine McCann today made an impassioned plea to her daughter’s abductor to return the missing girl two months after she disappeared from her bed.

Kate McCann appealed directly to the abductor saying: “It is not too late to give her back.”

Mrs McCann and her husband, Gerry, spoke yesterday about coping without their daughter, who was aged three when she disappeared from a Portuguese holiday apartment on May 3.

Mr McCann, a consultant cardiologist said: “Every day is hard. Every day is very, very tough. Madeleine has such a strong personality that it's really difficult not having her with us.”

He said a judicial secrecy order prevented him from discussing a couple who were arrested in Spain in connection with Madeleine’s disappearance. The couple, who have convictions for child abuse and have alleged links to a child smuggling, had attempted to claim the £2.5 million reward for Madeleine’s safe return.

When asked if the couple will still be in the Algarve at Christmas, Mrs McCann, a locum GP, replied: “I think at the moment we are just taking one day at a time. We are not looking that far ahead.

Her husband added: “We are committed to staying and we feel closer to Madeleine here.

“Also, as it has been such as an active investigation, with so much information coming through, and for the time-being we would like to stay here. It is more practical. For the foreseeable future we will remain here. We will review that.”

Mr McCann, 39, said the couple, from Rothley, Leicestershire, were “not capable” of returning to work as doctors at present.

“We still feel a lot can be done by ourselves, he said. “What we don’t want is to look back in another three or four months and say we wish had done this.”

When asked why Madeleine had generated so much international media attention, Mr McCann replied: “There are a number of circumstances, and I think that the fact that the abduction of foreign children in a foreign country played a part.

“The other aspect of this is that we and our family and friends have decided to campaign to maximise the media exposure, and electronic media which started a chain, and that had a huge impact over the first 24 hours.”

A spokesman for the McCanns apologised today after complaints from parents about an advertisement about Madeleine's disappearance had been shown in cinemas before the children's film Shrek the Third.

The Times revealed that the Odeon chain had decided not show the advertisement during Shrek after angry parents complained to the Advertising Standards Authority and cinema operators.

Some complained that, having tried to protect their children from the story of Madeleine's disappearance, they were confronted by it in the cinema.

Mr McCann will talk about the role that television and the media have played in the hunt for his daughter at this year’s Edinburgh International Television Festival.

Peter Barron, the chairman of the festival’s advisory panel, said the McCanns' campaign to find their daughter had been "a new and moving phenomenon in 2007”.

“We are very pleased to welcome Gerry McCann to Edinburgh to share his thoughts on how harnessing the power of the modern media can be used to help others in similar,” he said.

Tonight Portuguese detectives are still waiting to discover if forensic tests found any trace of Madeleine at the home of Danilo Chemello, an Italaian, and his Portuguese girlfriend, Aurora Pereira Vaz.

The couple had moved into a villa on the exclusive Sotogrande resort in Algeciras, south west Spain, shortly before Madeleine disappeared.

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