By Michael Deacon
From the following quotation, guess the identity of the household name examining the branches of his family tree tonight. “She saw his name on a list of people to be hanged under a clock in the next few days. Cripes!” Yes, it could only be Boris Johnson.The London Mayor and Daily Telegraph columnist is referring to a letter his grandmother wrote 100 years ago reporting news of Johnson’s great-grandfather – a controversial political journalist in Istanbul.
advertisementJohnson’s ancestry is a stew of nationalities: Turkish, English, Russian, German, French (“We were led to believe that Granny Butter had some immensely distinguished Alsatian antecedents. When I say Alsatian I mean ‘from Alsace’, they weren’t dogs”).
Like almost all episodes of Who Do You Think You Are?, tonight’s is impressively varied in tone (funny, sad, even at times uplifting) and uncovers surprising things: it turns out that Johnson has ancestors even more exalted than Granny Butter let on.
But perhaps Johnson’s most intriguing disclosure is that he won his school’s scripture prize.
As devotees of PG Wodehouse will know, this is the regular boast of a man to whom Johnson has been fondly likened: one Bertram Wooster.
Source : telegraph.co.uk