Stephen Mangan has joined an illustrious club of celebrities whose ancestor’s story was apparently “too boring” to fill an episode of Who Do You Think You Are?.
The comedian – best known for playing Dr Guillaume Secretan in Green Wing – was reportedly rejected after the BBC series’ production team discovered that his family all hail from the same location.
A source told theMail on Sunday that “researchers had to give up when they found out all of his ancestors were from the same place in Ireland”.
Previous celebrities to have had their stories rejected by the series, which delves into a selected person’s ancestry, include Michael Parkinson, Eamonn Holmes and Cherie Blair.
Parkinson recalled in a 2009 interview: “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.”
Representatives for Mangan and the show’s production company Wall to Wall have been contacted for comment.
