The return of WDYTYA to RTÉ

pinkypinky

Just read that there's a new Irish series of WDYTYA!

Line up:
Bertie Ahern, Laura Whitmore, Damien Dempsey, Adrian Dunbar, Pat Shortt and Samantha Power

Exciting!

L1011

Bertie letting his not-actually-Dub lineage out in the open? :eek:

pinkypinky

Probably agreed to do it in the misguided presumption it would remind people what a good president he'd make. Not.

Hermy

pinkypinky wrote: »

Exciting!

Not the word I'd use.

While I may not have the stomach for the Ahern episode, Damien Dempsey could be very interesting for me if they go back far enough.

pinkypinky

Ah I'm excited about anything vaguely genealogically related on tv. Makes people want to look into their own. And I could teach them!

Hermy

Agree with that Pinky - it's great to see genealogy getting such widespread mainstream coverage.

But me and (so-called) celebrity culture don't mix.

Alicat

That’s great news. Hopefully it’ll allow them to show more specific Irish records in depth.

I say that only in hope because I’m sure they’ll fluff over the research just to get to something “tv worthy”.

Waitsian

I can only vaguely remember the first (and only?) series. Was it any use? Who appeared? I remember Charlie Bird. I think.

Waitsian

Hermy wrote: »

Damien Dempsey could be very interesting for me if they go back far enough.

Yeah he and Dunbar of most interest to me. I've not heard of the two women. I'll watch them all anyway. Never know, might learn something new Re records.

pinkypinky

Laura Whitmore was an MTV presenter and now does other TV stuff.
Samantha Power is a journalist and politician - Irish born but based in the USA.

spurious

I wish every so often they'd just pick an 'ordinary' person. Almost every family has incidents of interest in the past.

pinkypinky

It just doesn't have the hook of even a minor celeb. Also, they research far more people than they show to make sure there's a good story, with the right sort of destinations to visit.

Jellybaby1

When will it be on? Any date announced as yet?

pedroeibar1

WDYTYA is a couch-potato series that has very little to do with genealogy. Inevitably the producers latch onto a 3x great grandfather (one of 32!) who is slightly out of the ordinary because he was in the workhouse/absconded/ featured in petty sessions/take your pick. If possible they go back further for an Ooh/Aaah moment on an individual who was one of 128 and owned a slave/was very rich. The programmes mislead more often than they educate. Anone here ever learn some new geno trick from the series? I’ve never heard of Laura Whitmore, Damien Dempsey or Adrian Dunbar. They and their ancestry are of no interest to me. Bertie’s Ahern ancestry is well known, West Cork, Kinsale & Bantry.

FWIW, I have no politics, but as some have brought political comment into the thread, I think the ranting about Bertie is overdone, people childishly looking for a scapegoat when a system was at fault. Apart from external forces, there was an Opposition (who agreed with Govt. policy and were trying hard to get their snouts back in the trough); there were stupid people who let their greed get in the way of common sense; there were unethical financiers/economists/accountants and then, on the other side, there were a few who said a crash was coming and were excoriated and ridiculed by all. People either need to get over it or educate themselves on the causes.

Hermy

Agree with you regarding the programme.

As for the politics, again I agree that the system was and continues to be at fault. But such systems tend not to fail without human intervention, and when you're the man in charge when these systems fail catastrophically, and your only response in the aftermath is "Everything was fine when I was in charge" which clearly it wasn't, then I think people are entitled to childishly scapegoat, though I wouldn't call it that - I'd call it holding people to account. But that's not something we do very well in this country and instead we're all supposed to get over ourselves and hurry along to the next fiasco.

Earnest

To get things back to a non-political level: why study genealogy? When you get past the televisual spectaculars (bringing the register back to the church where it is no longer kept, doing your online research in the middle of travelling), it is telling people that some of their ancestors may be interesting, and it may be possible to find out about them.

pinkypinky

No more serious politics talk please. There's a forum for that if you want.

tabbey

pinkypinky wrote: »

Just read that there's a new Irish series of WDYTYA!

Line up:
Bertie Ahern, Laura Whitmore, Damien Dempsey, Adrian Dunbar, Pat Shortt and Samantha Power

Exciting!

I would be most interested in Pat Shortt and Samantha Power.

Samantha's paternal grandfather was an army officer who lived to over a hundred.
On his gravestone he has the nickname "Bam Bam", perhaps a toddler's pronunciation of "Bang Bang".

Samantha's father,on the other hand, died in his forties, his drinking accelerated by Samantha being taken to USA by her mother,how will the show handle this. His dental practice was situated above Hartigan's pub, very convenient for an alcoholic.

pinkypinky

I was chatting to someone yesterday who says Samantha Power has Clare roots and is his 5th cousin.

Jellybaby1

The only name that pops out for me is the singer Damien Dempsey who sang 'To Hell or Barbados' which was about the Irish who were sent transported to Barbados in the 17th century. Otherwise I know nothing more about him or the others. Let's hope for decent research at least.

Hermy

Laura Whitmore and Samantha Power are the two I had to Google.