RootsChat.Com

This quote from Hivizman:
"In a recent biography of Finzi (Diana McVeagh's Gerald Finzi: His Life and Work, there's a footnote mentioning that one of Leverson's sons was Esther Rantzen's grandfather (Esther mentions this in an article in yesterday's Daily Mail, so I suspect that much of her family history on her mother's side was known to her already)."

You think that someone wrote in a book that Leverson was Rantzen's grandfather, and she wasn't aware of it ?  Hmmm......

"As I said, I didn't play much of part in the research so don't have any inside knowledge.... "

Sorry, but that's not the impression that you gave in your first post, where you gave the impression that you were quite involved

I think it's a little much to assume that she'd read a footnote in a rather obscure recently published book.  Also this footnote is about her grandfather not her great-grandfather (Montague).  I've not seen this book but I doubt it mentions Montague - so that's not going to help her googling is it?  She never claimed not to know about her grandfather.

I've just read the Daily Mail piece she wrote and she doesn't mention the book - just that her grandfather knew Finzi.  It also talks about a researcher who kept questioning her to check her story about what she did and didn't know.  Worth a read I think:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1051986/Esther-Rantzen-The-moment-I-discovered-shocking-truth-killer-great-grandfather.html

In my first post I clearly said "I was involved a little helping with some research ".  I don't think this contradicts my later post does it?

Quote from: Hivizman on Thursday 04 September 08 23:27 BST (UK)

These programmes are obviously fully researched before the subject is filmed, and are presented in a slightly artificial way.  This week's programme seemed to be more artificial than most. 

I think this is unavoidable.  Think about it, if you were a celebrity and you were approached by a TV film company, wanting to research your ancestors and broadcast the results to the nation, I'm pretty sure that you would insist on seeing what they had found before it was broadcast.  Apparently Patsy Kensit wanted to pull out of the show when another of her ancestors was found to have a shady past, but she was persuaded to carry on with it.

This just isn't true.  When I did a bit of research on this film it was made very clear to me that the golden rule was that the celebs are told nothing until they made the discovery on camera.  Of course it's all researched behind the scenes beforehand.  We all know how much work goes into researching our own family history, so do you really expect a camera crew to follow Esther Rantzen round for months and months while she goes down endless blind alleys?  She certainly wouldn't have the time anyway.  And would you really want to sit down and watch someone searching for hours online for the one census entry that's relevant to them?  

The point of the programme is that they filter out all the boring bits and lead the celebs to the gold nuggets for them to discover for the first time when being filmed.  Do you really think when Paxman cried it was all an act?  If it was then the man should be an oscar winning actor rather than on Newsnight.

I read what Patsy Kensit said about pulling out.  She said she wanted to pull out during filming when she discovered her grandfather was also a crook.  If she'd been told beforehand they wouldn't have started filming at all.