General Chat

Georgina, WDYTYA was originally done my ITV, who sold the rights to the BBC, so I doubt they will be going down that road again.

You get a better idea of the reality of genealogy by watching 'Heir Hunters' on BBC in the mornings. At least, although they are tracing back and then forward looking for living relatives who could be beneficiaries to an intestate estate, you get an idea of what kind of research and sometimes lives, people led.

On Tueday I wrote to the BBC and on the same day I sent an E Mail and a copy of these pages to the Royal Oak pub in Berkshire which is owned and run by Parky and his son.

So far not even an acknowledgement of the E Mail....................................

In answer to Georgina's earlier posting, ITV did run a tv series a few years back on genealogy, but for the life of me I can't remember the name of it. Anyone??

I remember it because I preferred it to WDYTYA. The person whose background was being researched got involved in parts of their past. For example I remember watching the Deirdre Barlow/Ann Kirkbride episode, where having discovered her g.grandad was an Ag Lab, she went to the farm and spent a day learning about his work, what he would have done, what tools he would have used, and then she had a go at hand ploughing a field and feeding the animals etc.
They explained about the machinery and tools used and I found it particularly interesting when they covered a programme about a bricklayer in London, as that's what my g.g.grandfather and my g.grandfather did.
There was another programme where someone's ancestor had been a baker, and they went to the bakery which still operates today, and had to bake bread from 3 in the morning!
A far more informative programme all round, yet it didn't last.

I'm writing my letter to the BBC, by the way, and it will be in the post tomorrow.

K

Karen, I remember that, had to google for title though

"Background
You Don't Know You're Born follows in the wake of the successful BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are?. Both shows are made by Wall to Wall. You Don't Know You're Born shows celebrities tracing their family tree and then travelling to where their ancestors lived and doing the jobs they did. It is narrated by Barbara Flynn. The show was widely criticized as being basically a clone of its BBC counterpart."

Cheers Rose.
Have to disagree with their description of it being a clone of the BBC programme........NOT SO...it was far better!!!!
K

I think its time to pull the plug on this thread. I started it to get people's feelings regarding the BBC dropping Michael Parkinson's story on WDYTYA because his ancestors were "boring".

Now we have people advocating that a "celeb" programme is the best !!!!!

If the thread does not revert to serious discussion about the BBC's actions I will delete it tomorrow.

Nighty night everyone.

Thanks Teresa, I did not realise there was a change over to the BBC. I do watch 'Heirhunter's', some interesting tree's are discovered.
Feel maybe there is another reason why Michael Parkinson's tree not shown after watching last night'sWDYTYA on the Moyle family



Karen, the programme you mentioned sounded very interesting.

Bernie, I have to disagree with you....my feeling is that most people on thus thread ARE in agreement with you, ie that we are not interested in the celebs, but in the actual genealogy part of the programme.

I'm sorry if my post about the ITV programme was one of those you felt contributed to this thread going in the wrong direction.
If I gave the impression that the celebs interest me - far from it!! What I was trying to illustrate was that I felt the ITV one was better than WDYTYA in that it was more realistic. In actual fact it didn't matter to me whether the guests were celebs or Joe Bloggs from next door, the point was that after some research they were able to have a go at doing the jobs their ancestors did.

I think it would be a shame if you pulled this thread. The number of people who have added, and the comments made, surely reflects that it is of interest.

K

Hi Karen,

My apologies, I stand corrected. I did get the impression that "celebs rule OK". I must admit that I misread the sentiment in your posting, please forgive.

I am quite happy to continue the discussion, in fact I am rather glad that the error of my ways has been pointed out to me !

Even if some people disagree - fine! We are here to listen to all points of view. I was just a little afraid that we were departing from the gist of the original thread.

ps. Yesterday I posted this:

"On Tuesday I wrote to the BBC and on the same day I sent an E Mail and a copy of these pages to the Royal Oak pub in Berkshire which is owned and run by Parky and his son.

So far not even an acknowledgement of the E Mail...................................."


I still have no acknowledgement, are we fighting a lost cause?

Bernie, as an unknown (to them) email address, could it have gone to their spam folder? In which case they won't have seen it.

Never thought of that.

But why publish the hotel's Email address in their "contact us" link?

maybe he's not actually there at the moment (could be away on business or holiday) or maybe they get so much mail for him personally that it takes ages to go through it
Maz. XX

Every business email is published,but they get so much spam, they have to have filters. So all too often, certain addresses, like hotmail or yahoo, don' t get accepted first time.

In my last job, I used to get about 60 genuine emails a day, and 300 spam. Inevitably, some got lost in the spam filters, it's unavoidable.

I'd send another one, but change the subject line a little.

Thanks for explaining that folks

Hi again Bernie,
Glad to see you decided against pulling this thread!!

Regarding your e.mail which has so far not been acknowledged, well, it could easily have gone into spam tray or wherever out there in cyberspace, any number of reasons, as others have suggested. So I was thinking how about you write your letter the good old fashioned way, and enclose a print out of this thread and post it to Mr Parkinson by 'snail mail'.
The letter will be hard to ignore if it's there in black and white, staring him in the face....what do you think?

K

what i would like to know is how come these celbs walk into a church and bang all the info is there for them. I went into my local church and they told parish records arent kept there anymore and i'd have to go to hertford county office to find them

Well I fell asleep watching the Chrs Moyles programme,

Read in paper yesterday, they are talking of putting Jordon aka Katie Price on WDYTYA.

Whats your thoughts on that?

Mo

My thoughts......
I am, honestly, sick to death of seeing Jordan (and her husband) or any mention of tjhem on the TV, in every newspaper and every magazine cover....so sick, in fact, that I doubt I would watch WDYTYA on principal........ESPECIALLY when they've axed the showing of a programme on someone as lovely as Michael Parkinson!!!!!!!!!

Just goes to prove that the BBC have caught a very bad case of 'star-struck' syndrome.

K