I’m related to Ugandan royalty... maybe that is why I got the OBE!

I HAD a little idea. I knew that my grandfather had come from India and gone over to Kenya, like many Asians did at that time; and I knew that his first wife had died and he’d married an African woman, but I wasn’t sure beyond that.

I never thought there would be an opportunity to find out more; you just think if there was more, you’d already know about it.

My mother felt the same, so to find out all of this, to find out that not only is there more history but that the African lineage goes back to more family and more importantly there are members of my family still around in Uganda, was just beautiful. IT WAS so lovely. For them to welcome me into their house, with camera crews and everything... They were so warm-hearted and so pleased to see me, with big smiles on their faces.

There were moments when I was sat with them that reminded me of my grandmother. I could feel the same energy, the mannerisms, the way they were.

It felt very similar in that sense and I felt very lucky to be in that situation. MY MUM is from East Africa and my dad is from rural Pakistan, so my father would have been expected to marry someone who was from Pakistan and probably from his own village; and my mother was probably expected to marry somebody from East Africa, from the same sort of community, but they didn’t.

Then I look back and my mum’s mum, my grandmother, was married to an Indian trader and she is from a black African family and then her mother, again, was married to an Indian trader.

Imagine doing that in the early 1900s and in the 1800s? It’s quite something.

I just feel really privileged and honoured to have that level of integration and that progressive streak throughout my family. IT’S a real reminder that we live in quite socially divided times. People want to try to divide us for various reasons of power, control, politics and religion, and actually we are all the same.

If you look in the mirror, you’re not just white, you’re not just Asian, and you’re not just Muslim. We are lots of different things. We come from lots of different backgrounds. I hope when people watch Who Do You Think You Are? – certainly members of my own family will feel the same personal feeling that I have – they might go away NOW it makes sense why the Queen gave me an OBE last year!

But no, it makes me proud and I want to find out more about that side of the family.

I think the great thing is we sometimes, for various prejudices and fears, can deny who we are.

I think there are members of my extended family that have chosen not to look back at their backgrounds for whatever reason, and you go, ‘Well it’s not just any black, African blood – it’s black, African royal blood.’

You couldn’t be more African if you wanted to!

I feel immensely proud of that. If I see Uganda in the news now or I read something about Uganda or Kenya, it doesn’t feel like I am just reading about another African country; I feel like I am reading something about my home. I love that and I can’t wait to take my family from here back to Uganda – we’ll make a real holiday of it and it will be a lovely journey for all my family to go on as well. I THINK it has. I think it’s slowly starting to sink in.

I’m British first: I love being British, I am from Birmingham, I am a Brummie, and over the years I have called myself British-Asian, British Pakistani, but I think I probably need to start saying British-African-Asian or BritishAsian-African.

That’s what I am and I want people to know that. It makes me proud of it, so I think it is a permanent change. I FEEL very fortunate that I’ve been given a chance to do that and I appreciate that not everyone will get the chance to do what I have done and go on a journey and have a fantastic team of researchers and experts looking at your own life history.

But yes, I just hope that we all stop and think and realise that we have to all be from different backgrounds.

That’s how we’ve evolved. We have to be, we are all from different races and what we see in each other’s faces and people’s social media profiles isn’t the whole story – there’s an entire back story which has made us who we are that we should all be utterly proud of and proud of ourselves and proud of each other.

That kind of compassion and understanding is the very beginnings of humanity – that’s what’s lacking at the moment, and hopefully if we all did that, we might get to that point.