Another family history programme
 

This might be interesting for those of us with Welsh roots.

Friday 28th February. BBC2 8.30pm "Coming home: John Humphries". The broadcaster traces his family history in Cardiff.

The bit of a write up it gets in my Sunday paper's listings magazine says it is part of a genealogy series begun in 2004 (it passed under my radar until now then) and that it has "an almost identical formula to WDYTYA" but concentrates purely on Welsh ancestry. It doesn't make clear whether it is a new series, the repeat of an old series or just a one-off showing of an old programme. I hope it is a series as anything that helps me trace where in Wales my Hugh ap Daniel came from will be very welcome! It is only 30 minutes long though so I'm not sure how detailed it can be. I shall be watching any way.

It says in the Radio Times, "first shown on BBC1 Wales". Apparently it is episode 4 of series 8 and was first shown (on BBC1 Wales) 16 Dec 2013. I'm not sure why they are showing this particular episode on BBC2 as they don't seem to have shown it last Friday. As far as I know, this series is usually only shown on BBC Wales, but I do remember when they showed the John Prescott episode on English TV and it was enough to put me off ever watching it again! The part of it that I remember focussed on John Prescott's great-grandmother (or maybe his 2xg-grandmother) who had some illegitimate children while still living at home with her widowed father, and a local historian of some kind told John Prescott that the children would have been the result of incest with the father, with no evidence whatsoever, or at least none that was presented on the programme, just surmise on the historian's part. I also remember John Prescott saying that the father didn't "give her away on her marriage certificate", (as though that was possible! he just meant the father didn't sign as a witness) and they took that as proof that the father wasn't invited to the wedding because the daughter hated him. And I remember John Prescott crying at the end and saying his great-grandmother was an "amazing woman". Hopefully the John Humphrys episode will be better researched!

So a one-off "space filler" then. Oh well, from what you say, it won't matter if we don't get an entire series - but I will give it a go.