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The third series of Who Do You Think You Are?
featured
on BBC 1 television in autumn 2006
Who Do You Think You Are ? is the hugely successful genealogy TV series in which
Britain's best loved
celebrities trace their family trees
The 4th series of
WDYTYA on BBC 1 began on Thursday 6th September 2007 with
Natasha Kaplinsky |
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WDYTYA 3rd Series Autumn 2006
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David Tennant , the actor
who played Dr Who in the Sci-Fi BBC series, is one of the celebrities
who appeared in the
genealogy programme Who Do You
Think You Are ? produced by Wall to Wall television productions.
Dr Brian Thomson of Scots Family is the
genealogist who researched David's Scottish family history in detail. Brian then accompanied David on his travels from Paisley to Mull in search of his Scottish
ancestors, and featured in the programme.
David
begins the search for his ancestors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgeuWaF9Tjo&feature=related
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David Tennant |

David finds human skulls in
Kilninian Church
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgeuWaF9Tjo&feature=related |
DAVID TENNANT
David was born in 1971 in Bathgate, a post-industrial town in West
Lothian between Glasgow and Edinburgh. His father Sandy MacDonald is a
Minister in the Church of Scotland. Davids real surname is MacDonald, but
when he was starting out as an actor another performer was already known
by that name. He chose instead the stage name Tennant because he saw
Pet Shop Boys Neil Tennants name in an article in Smash Hits and thought
it sounded good!.
David begins his historical investigations at his parent's home in Paisley by focusing on his fathers
side of the family, but learns that the paper trail on the
MacDonald family appears to run dry in Callendar, Perthshire. It cannot be so readily
traced to the MacDonald clan from the outer Hebrides, as David and his
father had hoped.
So he turns his attention to the lineage of his mother Helen McLeod,
and
finds that these forebears hailed from the Isle of Mull.
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David
visits his ancestors' croft at Inivey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrKUWGB2kEA&feature=related |
David visits Mull
and discovers that his McLeod ancestors were crofters at Inivey township
above
Calgary Bay for several generations. Here they lived as small tenant farmers until they were driven off their
crofts during the Highland Clearances
of the early nineteenth century. Dispossessed island families emigrated to
North America, or sought employment in the cities of the south, notably Glasgow, as did
David's family. Davids mother Helen remembered that,
when she was born, her grandfather Archie McLeod worked as an engineers
machinist at John Browns shipyard at Clydebank. The young Archie had been a skilled
footballer and was capped for the Scottish
Juniors. He then became a professional.
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To find out more about Archies footballing career, David went to see his
Uncle John, who told him that after being capped for the Scottish Juniors,
Archie was then signed by Derry City Football Club. David followed the
trail to Londonderry in Northern Ireland, where Archie had arrived from
Scotland as a 24
year old in 1932. David has two much older cousins in Londonderry,
called Billy and Barry, who hes never met before. They are Catholics:
their mother, Davids great-aunt Maisie, broke with family tradition and
married a Catholic. Billy and Barry are also life-long supporters of Derry
City FC and have been season ticket holders for forty years. Not only were
they able to tell David plenty about Archie, who was a famous and popular
footballer in his day, but they took him to a match where he met men whose
fathers and grandfathers had cheered Archie on. Archie is still a
celebrity in the town - he is still the highest goal scorer in Derry City
history but his career, though brilliant, didnt last long. During a match
in 1938 he sustained serious injuries which ended his career. In those
days footballers were paid nothing like the sums they are paid now, and
there was no insurance so he had to return to Glasgow to work in the
shipyards.
During his heyday in Londonderry, Archie had married a local beauty queen
called Nellie Blair. With Archies local celebrity and Nellies beauty,
they could possibly have been the Posh n Becks of the 1930s (although
certainly without the huge wealth that goes hand in hand with footballers
lifestyles today). David follows Nellies trail and makes contact with two
other cousins Billy and Betty, who are Protestants. From them he finds
out that the Blairs were a prominent Protestant family and that the lives
of Nellies father, William, and grandfather, James, were affected by the
political battles that surrounded Irish independence and Northern
Irelands secession from the Republic.
Maisie and her Catholic husband were not ostracized by her Protestant
relatives, but the tensions politicised Davids cousin Barry, who has been
involved in civil rights work and cross-community relations. At the end of
Davids visit to Londonderry, Barry takes him back to Derry City FC, where
Archie McLeod used to play, to watch Protestant and Catholic youngsters
play football; living embodiments of the principles espoused in 1998s
Good Friday Agreement, signed in the hope of bringing thirty years of
sectarian bloodshed to an end. BBC
describes the series as " a collection of moving and inspiring
stories of ordinary people who have discovered extraordinary facts
about their own ancestors through their own genealogical research."
Have
you fully researched your family history yet
?
Series 1 and Series 2 explored the family history of a
range of celebrities, including the Scottish family links of
Jeremy Paxman
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