This made me laugh

[Bagpuss]

Parky's Ancestors 'Too Boring' For TV Show

Sir Michael Parkinson is "gutted" that his ancestors are too boring for him to appear on a BBC family history programme.

Michael Parkinson said he was "gutted" when he learnt he would not be on the show

The former chatshow host has written in the Radio Times about the moment when producers from the series Who Do You Think You Are? told him they were not interested in his antecedents.

Researchers spent six weeks investigating the veteran interviewer's roots, but found nothing of interest among all the miners and labourers that make up Parky's family history.

But the 74-year-old said he was a huge fan of the show.

"When Who Do You Think You Are? called and asked if I was interested, I said I would be delighted, but warned that my own research had unearthed nothing of note.


"'Oh, they all say that. But we always find something," they said.

"Six weeks later they phoned to apologise. My story was so boring they had to cancel the entire project. I was gutted.

"Of all the celebrity-based telly programmes, this was the only one I wanted to be on."

[shaunbhoy]

Yes, I too enjoy that show, but padding out an entire hour with anecdotes relating to ferrets, pigeon-racing, and hovis butties would have been a step too far. The third world already gets enough airtime on that show without labouring the point about Barnsley!

[cojak]

Last week's epic about wotsherface's glorious ancestors wasn't exactly overly gripping...

Maybe it's me but I thought it was one of the best, beaten only by Boris...

[dang65]

That's the show which I saw once and the celebrity did this heartfelt speech about his ancestral hometown, "The iron foundries stretched the full length of the valley. The people here were born with the smell of iron, saw the glow of the furnaces, tasted iron in the air... they had iron in their blood."

Wow, really?

[shaunbhoy]

The most surreal one for me was Mathew Pinsent where they traced his ancestry back to God, or thereabouts, if memory serves. A little bit OTT. However, some of them have been quite illuminating, like Lesley Garrett where a great grandad poisoned his wife and got away with it, and Paxman with his shop-steward granny from the Gorbals.

[RichardCranium]

If they could not make a programme about ordinary folk through the ages interesting, it says more about the TV numpties than it does about Parky.