who do you think you are?

By Catherine Jones on Nov 3, 08 11:54 AM

I've been a keen genealogist for more than 20 years - my enthusiasm first fired by an old family bible with copperplate handwriting.
In fact, if I wasn't a journalist I'd quite like to have been a genealogist, investigating and fleshing out people's family backgrounds.
So I was interested to hear Nick Barratt, of BBC Who Do You Think You Are? fame, give a talk at the Family History Fair at St George's Hall on Saturday.

It was, I suspect, a talk he has given many times as it was delivered eloqently and without notes (but with an annoying amount of gum chewing).
And fair play to him, it was also amusing and with just the right amount of measured indiscretion about the Beeb's researching shortcomings, and some of the celebs the programme has featured.
Of course Who Do You Think You Are makes it look oh so easy. Anyone who has tried to probe into old records on the hunt for that elusive great grandmother will know that it's anything but.
Barratt said the one thing most of the celebs they featured had in common was that they were from Doncaster!
Apparently, none of the celebs are told what the researchers have discovered in advance. So what you see on TV is genuine reaction. Remember Jeremy Paxman crying in some Scottish slum?
The only one they ever broke the rule for was another Jeremy - Clarkson - in a bid to get him to come on boards. He was, according to a pretty good impression by Barratt, unmoved by lives of the majority of his ancestors. But when he spotted the link with the Kilner jar empire, and a possible fortune, he changed his mind.
One can only watch with a little schadenfreude (!) when Jezza discovered the family fortune had been blown in the 1930s - on women and fast cars.