Top 20 Shocking Reveals on Who Do You Think You Are

We were just as surprised as them. For this video, WatchMojoUK counts down the Top 20 Shocking Reveals on Who Do You Think You Are? We're looking at the biggest reveals that shocked the celebrities and viewers at home. Let us know in the comments if you’ve ever researched your ancestry in depth.

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WatchMojoUK is your source for British Top 10s, covering popular shows like Doctor Who, Strictly Come Dancing, Great British Bake Off, Coronation Street, This Morning, Good Morning Britain, The Graham Norton Show, Sherlock, and more! We also cover the latest in British Movies, Music and Pop Culture - We Top 10 it all!

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[trinaq]

I'll never forget David Tennant being brought to an old church where the remains of the dead where visible, and rushing to reenact "Hamlet" with the first skull he saw. Even better, he got to play the prince of Denmark three years later.

[gerardmorvan]

Alex Kingston should have received at least an honorary mention. One of her (female) ancestors was the owner of a hotel in which people paid the rooms by the hour, if you catch my drift.

[michaellaw]

I really liked the Kim Cattral episode about her grandfather.

[donyiiovanni]

Boris' family really loved giving their kids the Jimmy Saville haircut... Jesus

[katies]

I have recently researched my family tree.

My mums side have been in Lancashire for atleast 400yrs.

But I am related to Henry Norris (grandfather) Anne Boleyn (cousin) Thomas Cromwell (granduncle) King Edward III (grandfather) Henry II (grandfather) Oliver Cromwell (grandfather) Catherin Howard (cousin) Katherine Parr (cousin) Richard III (granduncle) and Thomas Worsley (grandfather)... who is the current Duchess of Kents relation too....to name a few.

I'm also related to King John on both sides of my family, my mums side decend from Henry III, and half of my dad's side (the rest are Irish) decend from Richard Fitzroy.

[chrishughes]

Patrick Stewart's one I found particularly impactful. So much more relevant for him and probably so conflicting for Patrick to learn.

[ArsLonga]

Boris is related to Mad King George III, why am I not surprised...

[peterhughes]

So that means Josh Widdicome and Mathew Pincent are distantly related.

[ellie]

I didn't have to guess who would be number 1, I knew it would be Danny Dyer

[HerbertAckermans]

I've been looking into my ancestry using online sources for a bit, found ancestors back to the 1300's. There is a lot you can find online which makes this kind of research kinda easy to do. Once you hit a snag in there not being parents known, it does mean a dead end using this method, and to know more, one would need to go out and get into the records themselves.

[HerbertAckermans]

To put relationships in perspective, it has been calculated that there have been 117 billion humans EVER. Now, if you start calculating your own ancestors, you run out of humans between the years 884 and 914. By that time, you would have over 137 billion ancestors. This means, we are all family, all related, and while these programs present interesting ancestors, chances are, a lot, and I mean A LOT of people have ancestry that includes all kinds of nobility, royalty, celebrity and notoriety.

[DynamixWarePro]

I have researched my family tree since 2021 and found out on my mums side I am related to: David and Richard Attenborough, Tom Hanks and Abraham Lincoln both distantly though the Hanks side of their families, The Scottish Wallace family that the famous William Wallace was from. My 4th great-grandfather was a Wallace and I think his ancestors came from Ayrshire and my family have said that is where their ancestors came from and John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams the US Presidents.

Several of my ancestors were at the siege of Derry in 1689. One was my 9th great-grandmother and her son, my 8th great-grandfather who was 15 at the time. Others, ancestors of my 4th great-grandmother, were either brothers or close relations and they fled north from the counties of Laois and Offaly after fearing persecution by the British crown and changed their surnames and fought for King William.

On my dads side I found out I am related to Che Guevara (My great grandmothers family were from the west of Ireland like Che's Lynch family were), Elvis Presley (I am still looking into Elvis ancestry to confirm it), the famous Scottish Hamilton family who one was Alexander Hamilton, one of the US founding fathers and James Hamilton who settled East Ulster with Scottish settlers in 1600s and I have cousins who are Hamilton's. I also discovered my great-grandfather wasn't my actual great-grandfather and my grandfather was illegitimate and just raised by him and his wife who I may be related to as she has the same maiden name as my great grandmother listed on my grandfathers birth certificate.

[sazfretz]

I love this show. I know my 10 times great grandfather was Edward Doty, a servant who came with his master on the Mayflower.

[thenodfather]

They could have added better than Whitehall and Dyer.
You know how insalubrious royalty is with Dyre amongst your ilk.

That was very sad about Stephen Fry's family.

[sgbh]

It has been confirmed that I can trace my heritage back to King Arthur’s chamber pot lady. And, I found a spork and pulled it out of the mud. 🤔

[TanyaRando]

I grew up in the Newport area, and there's a lot of things and places, named in honour of John Frost.

[simonrudd]

My family on my mums side are related to George Washington - something she found out recently

[Michaelthekiwi]

I've looked at my Great Uncle, who served with the Australian Army in WW1. All I can say... what a naughty boy.

Got VD in Egypt (kept flaring up throughout the rest of his life)
Was wounded in Gallipoli.
Evacuated to Gibraltar.
Got married in London
Went AWOL for a month
Wounded again in France (appears he was shot in the chest and lost a lung.)
Evacuated back to London for the rest of the war
Returned to Australia sans wife, where he died of the Spanish Flu shortly after returning home.

I've tried tracking down his wife to see what happened to her, but no luck so far.

[auldfouter]

Why the stupid comment about Claire Balding being ( disturbingly ! ) related more than once to Henry the 7th?
Going that far back it's possible not to have any genetic material from that ancestor. We only contain genes from about 125 separate people. For some reason ( reverse snobbery ?) people like to claim the upper classes are inbred when in fact it's just because their ancestry is fully documented. Before the invention of the bicycle people usually married someone within a mile or two and if your ancestors were in one location for 200 years they will be heavily interconnected. I've seen this clearly from researching lots of family trees.

[rosedalton]

Looks like the sangreal may be real.

I'd LOVE to get my ancestry done. Been asking the family for years