This won't be on my list of favourite episodes, because (1) Rupert Everett was such a drama queen, and (2) I wouldn't want him doing any genealogy research for me, because he jumped to too many conclusions. There were lots of facts that were skipped over on certificates which would have ended the programme 20 minutes earlier, which would have suited me just fine
I quite agree. In fact, these later episodes all seem to focus on the personality and silly twitterings of the celebrity concerned, rather than the family being researched, and I find it totally off-putting. It's a shame really, because the original progamme concept seems to have been lost.
The programme did set out on a mission - to find out if Rupert's g. grandfather was a stockbroker, like his father was, and it achieved that goal. What I didn't like was the way it was done. Rupert either had very poor support from the researchers, or he didn't listen to them. For instance, when he sent off for the birth certificate of his grandfather, he skipped over the first column (date and
place of birth) so fast, he almost set fire to the paper ! His grandfather clearly wasn't born at the swanky address befitting his grandparent's status. Looking at that, clearly something had gone wrong, but it took another 10 minutes of programme time with Rupert wading through newspaper records to find out that his ancestor had gone bankrupt.
When this programme is watched by so many who have a great interest in genealogy, it is an insult to their intelligence to skip over such important clues that even a novice would spot. Another example was speculation of how old his g. grandmother was, when 3 minutes earlier he had her marriage certificate in his hand !