Who do they think they are?

[Khandro]

Last night we had another demonstration of absurdity; Alexander Armstrong tracing his ancestry back to William the conquerer! Will someone please point out to these gormless participants the simple fact that the entire indiginous population is so related. Given that we all have 2 sets of grandparents- 4 sets of great gandparents - 8 sets great great grandparents, and say there are 5 generations in a century, a baby born now will have had in the year 1900, 32 sets of gggg grandparents. Extrapolate this back a century to 1800 and he/she will have 1,016, and a further century to 1700 a we have staggering 32,512 pairs, all with millions of descendents. To persue the 'search' back to the Eleventh Century is quite meaningless. We are all related to one another (and William the Conquerer).

[jackthehat]

I'm not.............:o(

[Bobbisox]

I might do mine and see if there's any rapist from Scandinavia lurking in there...when they came across to pillage and rape us poor Norveners.

[PokerMan]

i'm related to the queen but she never sends me a card with money in it for my birthday. i hope the old cow dies

[tamborine]

me, from the Dayaks of Borneo - 'cause I've been head hunted

[dundurn]

Mmmmmm... but a lot of these 'different' ancestors will be the same people i.e. when cousins, second cousins etc marry each other. I don't think if you went back down MY family tree (being as it's mostly Scots and Irish) you'd have much chance of coming across William the Conqueror nor any of the Stewarts either. In addition, of course a lot of people aren't indigenous. Remember Boris Johnson and his Turkish ancestry or David Baddiel and his German/ Jewish forebears? Finally, of course, a lot of us are going to find out that our research runs out of steam somewhere in the 18th century and that what came before that will forever be a mystery, so when someone CAN trace their family back to 1066 it is at least a bit interesting. I like the programme, and I have to say I liked the picture of Alexander Armstrong it showed us. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy and in complete contrast to some of the self-obsessed individuals we've seen in previous programmes.

[april1693]

The funny thing is that in series one of Armstrong and Miller, Alexander Armstrong took the mickey out of this show!

[Supermike]

I must admit it seemed to me to be a bit too simple for Alexander to trace his family tree right back to William the Conquerer. The Queen would have more problems than he seemed to have. Henry Vll only claim was that his mother was John of Gaunt's grand daughter. The James l was the grandson of Henry Vlll's sister. George l's mother was the grand daughter of James l.

So it may be that Alexander has more claim to the throne than Queen Elisabeth. Let's make him King now and by-pas that pudding Charles!

[VHG]

I think the important thing is PROVING you go back to William the Conquerer.

I bet if most of us tried to trace our family tree back it would stop around 1700s or 1800s due to lack of details registered anywhere (births, deaths, marriages etc).

Only people from certain families would have their family details saved somwhere, the rest of us would not have any records anywhere.

Anyway wasn't William illegitimate so he is decended from a b*****d !

[jno]

like VHG says, it's being able to trace the line; most of us can't. Plus the pleasure of actually doing the tracing (or getting someone on teh BBC to do it for you).

[I.Don No]

Even if you can trace your forebears back to the year dot how would you know it was true. Your mother is always your mother, but your father is who your mother 'says' it is...........wonder if they thought of that one....lol

[spudqueen]

I agree - I have heard it said that to know that it is your family you should only trace the Mothers!

And Khandro - I don't think we're all related to William the Conquerer, I mean there were already people living in Britain when William came over from Normandy, otherwise there wouldn't have been anyone to conquer!

[Khandro]

Spudqueen - you ought to think that through; of course there were Ancient Brits, but very quickly their descendents got mixed up with those of William's. Not to mention the fact that humans did not spontaniously errupt on the British Isles, so William himself was descended from the same common stock as they were, and apparently we all come from one African mother anyway.

[jackthehat]

Wrong.
Not very quickly, at all.............if ever, in many cases.
William of Normandy was not single-handedly responsible for ALL the children born in these islands post 1066.

[boxtops]

Pokerman - wait a few years and ER2 will send you a card when you're 100....

[hopalong]

April1693 You are SO right about this episode. Did Alexander Armstrong and the makers of this programm really expect to believe that Armstrng did not know he was a direct ancestor of Wiliam the Conquerer?