BBC TV "WDYTYA?" Series 9 Episode #3: Sebastian Coe

[bevbee]

Another very enjoyable episode - a good series so far.

Larry Lamb next week looking into his biological Grandparents - his mother was adopted as a baby.

Apparently there is a mystery which the WDYTYA researchers couldn't solve. 

[toni*]

in the very first series there was a mystery they couldn't solve and within 1hr ouf the program ending they received several emails telling them the answer 

[candleflame]

His cousin, who did the initial work must have found everything out from here as its not too difficult  if you are lucky enough to hit on privileged lines and wills.

I'm not too sure how much actual research the cousin had actually done as the certificate that she showed seb was dated November 2010 so it had obvioulsy only recently been purchased. Unless they got a pristine copy just for the programme which seems a little unlikely.
I enjoyed the programme and I think all of us would be just as uncomfortable if we found we had slave owners in our genealogy.
It was lovely that he now has a set of pictures of his assorted grandfathers over time though.

[sarahsean]

Really enjoyed this one as did other half who commented last week that the episodes had been too similar so far. It gives you a good incite into early British history.

I have also been watching two very interesting Irish genealogy programs which i don`t know but people might be able to watch abroad via RTE and TV3 websites.

One called the Tenements on TV3 was a program regarding life in a Tenement house a sort of Victorian farm experiment where a family had a go at living in a tenement house and where the history of tenement houses was explained.

The other is a new series called Genealogy roadshow where normal people have their genealogy explored. It did feature people who had a interesting family history story eg one family was related to the fourth wife of Charlie Chaplan, it makes a change to seeing celebrities stories.

regards
Sarah

[Lisajj]

At the end of the day, I think that WDYTYA really is there to try and get people who haven't done any research to start doing some.  It therefore, has to try and make things a bit more "exciting" and "celeb" than they really are.  If you just watch it as "entertainment" then its perfectly fine.  If you are watching it to get research help, then, its not really the right thing.  They do get a lot of stuff packed into an hour and there are a lot of people researching their families who do just head straight down one line.  I know I hop all over the place, but I know other people who just follow one surname as far as they can go and then take the next one.  Yes, he mentioned that he's a runner, but so what, that's exactly what he was, its important to him.  If I ever became famous (or infamous) then I would probably keep mentioning that for 8 years I was a test driver and that I've driven loads of fancy cars, mainly because its something I'm fairly proud off.

:-)

[BumbleB]

Having finally watched this episode, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Yes, I'd read the comments previously made here, but have to somewhat disagree with most of them.

He did mention his running, but that was in the UK and like all athletes he associates places with races - OH continually tells me that he has raced down this road (in the 50's and 60's  ).

I thought he handled the illegitimate children and "mistresses" admirably and with due deference to another age and lifestyle including slavery in Jamaica, without commenting from a modern-day angle.  What was accepted then and what is acepted now are two entirely different perspectives, and to an extent cannot be compared. Excellent 

All I have to do now is stay awake long enough to catch up on the two previous episodes 

BumbleB

[lbud]

I was disappointed that they didn't go further back into the Hyde family, especially when we could see them in the book.   The programme seemed to end prematurely, but I suppose they have to fit it all into one hour.  Perhaps they provided more detail to Coe.

About his cousin the researcher...maybe she already knew much of what Coe learned, but for the purposes of the show she just got him started on the search.  It appears to be a very well documented line so it's unlikely all his findings were new to her.

[Grothenwell]

Can anybody remind me which show from previous years also had a celeb who had slave owning ancestors?

It wasn't the Colin Jackson or Spike Lee episodes.

Thanks

[Nick29]

Was it Ainsley Harriott ?  He had both slaves and slave owners in his ancestry, as I recall ?