Straight talking from EastEnder over Royal past
HE MAY have carved out a career as a Cockney hard man in EastEnders, but the actor Danny Dyer insisted that his booking as host of a programme on Royal history did not constitute a dumbingdown of the subject by the BBC.
Dyer, who hails from Canning Town, discovered in 2016 that he was related to Thomas Cromwell, Edward III, William the Conqueror and Henry III during filming for the genealogy series, Who Do You Think You Are?
He will now appear in a twopart series charting his regal lineage, living out pivotal moments in his ancestors’ lives.
He suggested critics had been turned against the new programme, Danny Dyer’s Right Royal Family, for the sole reason that he had a “working-class accent”.
He said: “I don’t get it. Judge it after you’ve watched it, at least. A lot of people might be bored of that boring history formula, and I think (this is) a different way to learn.
“I’m going to try to be as funny as much as I possibly can, and I like to embrace every historian with a big cuddle at the beginning, you know, to make them settle down, and just have an old chinwag about medieval history.”
Dyer said he hoped the programme would dispel the image he cultivated presenting series such as Danny Dyer’s Deadliest Men, which he said he had done for the money.
“It got me a nice little house and stuff and got one of me kids through private school,” he said.
“I’m a sensitive little soul, really, quite a spiritual man as well.”
The new show, on BBC One next week, will feature his daughter, Dani Dyer, winner of the reality show Love Island, dressing up as an Elizabethan princess.