Secrets of Lulu’s family tree
BORN into the east end of Glasgow in 1948, Lulu might have suspected a shake of her family tree would reveal tales that were less Enid Blyton and more Brothers Grimm.
Even so, the Scots singer was not prepared for what emerged when she became the latest subject of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?
In an episode to be shown this week, Lulu discovers that her grandfather was a character who could have walked from the pages of No Mean City, the 1920s-set novel that became a byword for a Glasgow scarred by razor gangs.
“I had a criminal for a grandfather,” says Lulu after finding out that her mother’s father, Hugh Cairns, served time in a variety of prisons, including Barlinnie, from the age of 16.
Lulu’s aim in taking part in the programme had been to find out why her mother, Elizabeth, was the only one out of seven children born to Cairns and his wife Helen to be given away. “The story of my mother is a big secret,” says the singer.
Elizabeth’s discovery that she had been fostered as a baby “played havoc with her, with her state of mind”. It was a subject young Marie Lawrie and her three siblings learned not to talk about.
The BBC show has gained a reputation for reducing its subjects to tears as ghosts from the past rise from the archives.
Former Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman wept on learning that his Glaswegian great-great-grandmother had been turned down for poor relief because she had an illegitimate child, a decision that forced the widow even further into poverty.
Lulu, 68, proves no exception as she visits Springburn railway depot, where her grandfather worked as a labourer, to the Winter Gardens in Glasgow Green, the Mitchell Library and an Orange Lodge in the East End.
Who Do You Think You Are?, BBC1, Thursday, 8pm.