Top 20 Shocking Reveals on Who Do You Think You Are 

I really liked the Kim Cattral episode about her grandfather.

To put relationships in perspective, it has been calculated that there have been 117 billion humans EVER. Now, if you start calculating your own ancestors, you run out of humans between the years 884 and 914. By that time, you would have over 137 billion ancestors. This means, we are all family, all related, and while these programs present interesting ancestors, chances are, a lot, and I mean A LOT of people have ancestry that includes all kinds of nobility, royalty, celebrity and notoriety.

In my research, I found a Japanese ancestor born in 1503, and when he was 19 years old committed murder. He ran away from home, entered a monastery and became a monk. Maybe as self punishment, he later had himself sealed alone inside a windowless suicide boat and cast off into the Pacific Ocean to certain death. After weeks alone at sea his boat broke up off Okinawa where it was spotted by a peasant boy and rescued by the locals. He later helped to establish Buddhism in Okinawa, where temples he started exist today. I visited them. Eventually I hope to find out who he murdered, and pay my respects at the victim's grave.

Patrick Stewart's one I found particularly impactful. So much more relevant for him and probably so conflicting for Patrick to learn.

Jesus the transition from Stephen Fry's segment discussing Auschwitz to "NUMBER 10!" was a bit clunky to say the least.

I'll never forget David Tennant being brought to an old church where the remains of the dead where visible, and rushing to reenact "Hamlet" with the first skull he saw. Even better, he got to play the prince of Denmark three years later.

Boris is related to Mad King George III, why am I not surprised...

My 4x grandfather took off to France with Bonny Prince Charlie after the Battle of Culloden. He left behind a wife and son. After his wife died he came back to Scotland with a French wife and stepson about the same age as his own son. The French stepson was causing trouble in the town getting too friendly with the women and the biological son got the blame. The biological son took his inheritance from his mother and went to England and changed his last name to his mother’s maiden name. The documents for the name change were thrown into the fire by my great great grandfather saying “any name that was good enough for his father was good enough for him” and the papers went into the fire. One day I hope to go to England and find out the real last name.

Number 09: to be fair, nobody ever expects the spanish inquisition!

Boris' family really loved giving their kids the Jimmy Saville haircut... Jesus

One of my ancestor is Lord Byron and the whole gang of Byrons! He's technically my cousin 4/5 generations back and I am the 3rd great granddaughter of Henry James Byron, the playwright and actor, who created the Panto character "Widow Twankey". Tracing your family tree is amazing and confusing all at the same time. It gives you a sense of identity and makes you question nature and nurture....

Alex Kingston should have received at least an honorary mention. One of her (female) ancestors was the owner of a hotel in which people paid the rooms by the hour, if you catch my drift.

I love this show. I know my 10 times great grandfather was Edward Doty, a servant who came with his master on the Mayflower.

Jack Whitehall’s dad is the star of this show 🤣🤣🤣

I didn't have to guess who would be number 1, I knew it would be Danny Dyer

Scotland has its fair share of tangerine tools also.

Writing from Canada. Our family can trace back my father’s side to 1666. 10x great grandfather came from France to Quebec as a boat builder. He married a ‘fille du roi’ (King’s daughters), sent over to Quebec by King Louis 14th of France, to marry the settlers. Note- not related to the King. Mostly orphans and widows.

All my relatives came from England on my dad's dad sideand never left England to live elsewhere until one bunch managed to book a trip on a ship and my grandfather and a few of his family survived and since they couldn't afford /feared a trip back, they just settled in the states. Turns out the ship was called the Titanic :O

Why the stupid comment about Claire Balding being ( disturbingly ! ) related more than once to Henry the 7th? Going that far back it's possible not to have any genetic material from that ancestor. We only contain genes from about 125 separate people. For some reason ( reverse snobbery ?) people like to claim the upper classes are inbred when in fact it's just because their ancestry is fully documented. Before the invention of the bicycle people usually married someone within a mile or two and if your ancestors were in one location for 200 years they will be heavily interconnected. I've seen this clearly from researching lots of family trees.

I have researched my family tree since 2021 and found out on my mums side I am related to: David and Richard Attenborough, Tom Hanks and Abraham Lincoln both distantly though the Hanks side of their families, The Scottish Wallace family that the famous William Wallace was from. My 4th great-grandfather was a Wallace and I think his ancestors came from Ayrshire and my family have said that is where their ancestors came from and John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams the US Presidents. Several of my ancestors were at the siege of Derry in 1689. One was my 9th great-grandmother and her son, my 8th great-grandfather who was 15 at the time. Others, ancestors of my 4th great-grandmother, were either brothers or close relations and they fled north from the counties of Laois and Offaly after fearing persecution by the British crown and changed their surnames and fought for King William. On my dads side I found out I am related to Che Guevara (My great grandmothers family were from the west of Ireland like Che's Lynch family were), Elvis Presley (I am still looking into Elvis ancestry to confirm it), the famous Scottish Hamilton family who one was Alexander Hamilton, one of the US founding fathers and James Hamilton who settled East Ulster with Scottish settlers in 1600s and I have cousins who are Hamilton's. I also discovered my great-grandfather wasn't my actual great-grandfather and my grandfather was illegitimate and just raised by him and his wife who I may be related to as she has the same maiden name as my great grandmother listed on my grandfathers birth certificate.

My tree is a mess with there being so many offshoots because of all the siblings my great-grandfather had and since most of my great-grandparents relatives never came over to the US, the information I can gather online is pretty slim. I need to take a trip to italy and visit the towns they lived in, since most of them are still small and the churches still hold a lot of the information on the family. It'll be a huge undertaking and while extremely fun to do, it's also going to cost a lot of money, but I am looking forward to doing it in the next few years.

I've been looking into my ancestry using online sources for a bit, found ancestors back to the 1300's. There is a lot you can find online which makes this kind of research kinda easy to do. Once you hit a snag in there not being parents known, it does mean a dead end using this method, and to know more, one would need to go out and get into the records themselves.

I agree with Lesley Garrett about the poisoning. It wasn't an accident.

My 8th Great Granduncle sold out his father & elder brother( and therefore rightful heir) to Oliver Cromwell. As a reward Cromwell gave said 8x Gr. Granduncle the family’s castles. He later sold one of the castles to former PM David Cameron’s ancestors.

I have recently researched my family tree. My mums side have been in Lancashire for atleast 400yrs. But I am related to Henry Norris (grandfather) Anne Boleyn (cousin) Thomas Cromwell (granduncle) King Edward III (grandfather) Henry II (grandfather) Oliver Cromwell (grandfather) Catherin Howard (cousin) Katherine Parr (cousin) Richard III (granduncle) and Thomas Worsley (grandfather)... who is the current Duchess of Kents relation too....to name a few. I'm also related to King John on both sides of my family, my mums side decend from Henry III, and half of my dad's side (the rest are Irish) decend from Richard Fitzroy.

I've looked at my Great Uncle, who served with the Australian Army in WW1. All I can say... what a naughty boy. Got VD in Egypt (kept flaring up throughout the rest of his life) Was wounded in Gallipoli. Evacuated to Gibraltar. Got married in London Went AWOL for a month Wounded again in France (appears he was shot in the chest and lost a lung.) Evacuated back to London for the rest of the war Returned to Australia sans wife, where he died of the Spanish Flu shortly after returning home. I've tried tracking down his wife to see what happened to her, but no luck so far.

My family on my mother's side has been traced back to Kings of Norway.

Clearly, Judy Dench was born to do what she does.

I've gone back as far as the late 1700's. My 3x Great Grandfather was a drunk who threatened his bigamous wife with a dagger! Still he lived to a ripe old age in poverty in Burnley and believe me, the drink gene has been passed down the line!

My family name goes back centuries and is huge in these parts so tracking down whomever I'm directly descended from could be difficult, I've looked into them myself but it is a hard trail to follow without more money.

My 23rd great-grandfather is Robert the Bruce. We're still working on a potential other connection to the royal family.

I'm sorry. I'm not a Brit so most of these mystery cases I don't know. 💙😍👏🏻I enjoyed watching this video.

My mom's father is a relative of Winston Churchill. I have a letter from the Churchill estate saying her family has no claim on inheritance from his estate after his death.😢

Captain Picard really looks a lot like his father. Sorry Jean-Luc, but us fans will not fault appreciating you always. Sincerely, Belgium.

Why does Boris Johnson always look like an unmade bed?

a great programme indeed. During lockdown, my son and i put our boredom to good use and went about researching my scottish fathers background in order to identify a mysterious extra sister it was rumoured to have had. We never did find any evidence of her but we did establish that his great grandfather x12 was Sir James Balfour of Pittendreich who was one of Mary Queen of Scots Advisors and had a major part in the establishment of Scots Law. It was quite a discovery and sadlyone my dad never kew as he died four years ago at the age of 84. I am proud to say he too was a remarkable man having served 33 years of distinction the British Army rising to the honourable rank of Regimental Sergeant Major. After I got this news of Sir James, ii went on to do a Open University course on Mary Queen of Scots in order to understand my ancestor and how he betrayed Queen Mary and kept his head on his shoulders!

The revelation that Danny Dyer is descended from Edward III was disingenuous. There was nothing special about this - everyone who has English ancestry is descended from Edward III, but not everyone can trace the connection in surviving records. My family has managed to do so, and trace back even further to William the Conqueror, but millions of us are also descended from him.

It has been confirmed that I can trace my heritage back to King Arthur’s chamber pot lady. And, I found a spork and pulled it out of the mud. 🤔

The best bit was Danny Dyer telling the crew to ‘get off my land’!😅

Seen Britain's true monarch? By Tony Robinson, M Pinsent must be related to them. they are in Australia (And D Dyer=Plantagenet)

Mathematically, everyone is related to everyone else and is descended from nearly every anchient ancester.

My family history has been researched by firstly my mother then after her death by myself. And we have found that her maternal granny is a first cousin to D.H.Lawrence and his siblings

I tried to research family history, especially since nobody knows what our family name means and isn't very wide-spread, but couldn't find records. We mus heave been a really peasantly peasant family, I guess X)

So, if Matthew Pinsett is descended from Edward I and Danny Dyer from his grandson Edward III, does that make them very, very distant cousins?

My daughter researched us and found we are distantly related to Marie Antoinette.

I had mine done, but they couldn't find anything and refunded me...

Looks like the sangreal may be real. I'd LOVE to get my ancestry done. Been asking the family for years

So that means Josh Widdicome and Mathew Pincent are distantly related.

I have not done much family history stuff, but both my parents have. And I have several stories, like my 3 or 4 times great grandfather who one some land, and he found a place to build his cabin, and as luck would have it, there was already a bunch of logs, seemingly abandoned that he used to build his cabin. Things went well until there was a knock on the door, it was the Native American tribe, who, upon returning from their seasonal grounds discovered that their logs had been used to build a cabin. I can only assume things worked out as I exist.

I remember the Matthew Pincent episode… and literally shouting at the to… no way no way…. 😢

My family on my mums side are related to George Washington - something she found out recently

I have great empathy with Sir Patrick in this as my own father suffered from PTSD as well. The man that returned to us from Viet Nam, especially after having been taken prisoner, escaping and being shot, was not the Daddy who I said goodbye to. Interestingly, my mother and her cousin have worked for years on our genealogy and found that we are related the Bordens, as in Lizzie Borden.

If your desperate enough to steal potatoes, he must of really needed the spuds

My sister researched our history and a ancestor was the guardian of Scotland in 1301, sir john de soules

Me just commen as muck😂. I was born in the Netherlands and our family tree on both my parents sides have been followed back to the early 1700s in Germany but because of wars lots of historic documents are lost to us! But I'm pretty sure that the largest part of my DNA is from the Germanic tribes. I always thought Boris Johnsons faced reminded me of some...oh yeah he so resembles Willem Alexander the now King of the Dutch.

That thumbnail looks like Stephen Fry is discovering that one of his relatives is Hugh Laurie in drag.

I grew up in the Newport area, and there's a lot of things and places, named in honour of John Frost.

They could have added better than Whitehall and Dyer. You know how insalubrious royalty is with Dyre amongst your ilk. That was very sad about Stephen Fry's family.

When researching my family tree I found a however many times great grandfather who was in the court of Henry VIII and apparently he was not a nice man. More recently in my tree I have evidence to suggest that my great great grandparents on my dads mums side bumped off my 2x Great Grandfathers wife after they started and affair (she was their housekeeper) and she fell pregnant with their first child, my great grandfather.

We're all related to Adam and Eve, if you think about it.

Word has it that I'm related to Bonny Prince Charlie (a Stuart), via a female Stuart in 19th century. Her father was, predictably, a Charles Stuart of which there are thousands in NE England and Scotland. How would anyone reliably be able to trace a line back and hand on heart say it's definite lineage? (Although the Stuart clan allegedly started when Mary Queen of Scots bestowed nobility on a steward in favour, and the name Stewart became Stuart because she preferred a French spelling!) On the other side of my tree the bloke the marriage records said was my Great Grandfather was proved not to be through DNA. I think many records are sketchy at best and taken with a pinch of salt.

Leley Garrett was NOT overjoyed, she was incredulous. 😡

And Danny Dyer should be bloody king!

"Descended from Adam and Eve..."? NO!!! He really is special! Come on people, do you hear yourselves?

poor narration - adds little value and many inaccuracies - null point

12:30 And I thought George III was the bad one. As an American, perhaps my history is a bit different than yours.

Is it Danny Dyer or Malcolm Smith who is the direct descendant lol

I'm 14 * related to Mary bolin also... This is getting to be a small world people oh yeah and King George the third, Queen Elizabeth II, William of Cambridge, and Harry I don't know is he still hold his title? My finally comes from Kent

Holy cow... I'm related to Boris Johnson wow

I do love it when the wokies find out their relatives are/were the very thing they woke against

It's good to be the king

Any one know of Sir Thomas Lipton's illegitimate children? One boy, one girl? Still alive...

a relative of mine is a madam and a bigamist- im sure back somewhere she might have handed off children to their fathers, that's a theory of mine.

I’d like to‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

Yeah, wouldn't mind having some professionals research the ancestry of a poor danish nobleman I have far back in my ancestry. That bit if VERY muddy, and it's the 16th century, there should be more records.

Yr Wyddfa is the name now used for Snowdon.

Cool

how tf is being related to God not number 1?

Tenant - what a prick.

sack the second narrator

Why does the narrator have a silly voice when talking about Boris Johnson? Seriously grow up.

Josh widdicombe has never been funny ever

We're all descended from Adam and Eve,

Wtf are they crying about? It's not like they ever met and knew these so-called relatives

Sorry but, are these crying celebs crying because they've just found out people die..? It's rather pathetic.

Most of the celebrities are of Jewish origin. Not British. Shows who runs the country now doesnt it.