MY FAMILY SCANDAL

Politics, royalty, tragedy... and a very big secret – Clare Balding delves into her ancestors’ lives in a new series of Who Do You Think You Are?

There’s something of the mischievous child about sports presenter Clare Balding as she approaches the challenge of researching her family tree in the BBC genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are?.

She knows she’s embarking on a project that might turn out to be a tad controversial, if family whispers are to be believed, and says she’s looking forward to ‘ferreting around in lives that seemed very closed to me, and maybe finding things they didn’t mean to be public’.

What are they, though? Well, hold onto your corsets because the show that delves into celebs’ ancestry has delivered another corker. It’s no shock Clare finds aristocratic links – her mother is, after all, a cousin of the Earl of Derby, while her father, who trained the Queen’s racehorses, is also well connected. What does come as news is that her greatgrandfather, an MP who mixed in high society, had a secret life.

There were family whispers about Sir Malcolm Bullock, but all Clare knew for sure was that her grandmother once burned letters that referenced him. She now discovers that Sir Malcolm was part of a bohemian set and was a visitor at house parties attended by gay men, who in those times couldn’t be open about their sexuality. ‘You can’t say this often enough,’ says Clare. ‘It was illegal.’

It also emerges that Sir Malcolm may have had a relationship with the artist Rex Whistler. Clare reads Whistler’s diary and finds it filled with references to dates with Sir Malcolm. They even went to Paris together. By the end of the show she’s convinced. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that he was gay or bisexual,’ says Clare, whose wife is journalist Alice Arnold.

As subjects for the show go, you can’t get much better than Clare, given that her family ticks every box – politics, sex, scandal, royalty (her great-grandmother Lady Victoria Stanley, Sir Malcolm’s wife, was a friend of Queen Mary).

Unsurprisingly there are also horses galore, but the racing glory is mingled with tragedy – Lady Victoria died in her 30s after a hunting accident. The letter her devoted father writes to her husband after her death has Clare in tears. ‘I said I wouldn’t cry. Pull yourself together,’ she says, as the hankie comes out.

With every new series of WDYTYA? there’s the fear the bubble will have burst and the family backgrounds of our celebs will turn out to be a bit dull. Could you actually beat last year’s episode in which EastEnders actor Danny Dyer discovered he was related to royalty?

Happily, this series also sparkles with discovery, and the strong line-up includes

presenters Emma Willis and Fearne Cotton, singer Lulu and comedian Ruby Wax. Strictly judge Craig Revel Horwood heads to his native Australia hopeful the trip will shed light on where he gets his showbiz flamboyance from, while Citizen Khan’s Adil Ray aims to find out more about his family’s Asian and African heritage.

The run begins with actor Charles Dance, who learns his father was 26 years older than he thought. And that’s just the start of an incredible voyage of discovery. ‘Streuth! It’s all very furtive and secretive, isn’t it?’ he says, as the family secrets come thick and fast.

The sentiment could be applied to all the episodes, when no one ever quite knows what’s coming next.

Clare’s MP greatgrandfather mixed with the famous, including Winston Churchill, Rex Whistler (with whom he may have had a relationship) and Nancy Mitford (top, l-r).