SHE’S the Queen of TV game show The Chase – and now Anne Hegerty has discovered she is related to real royalty.
The quiz champ learns on tonight’s episode of genealogy series DNA Journey that her 20-times great grandfather was King Robert the Bruce — and her 19th cousin is the Queen.
But Anne, 63, confesses she had heard this before from her grandmother but didn’t believe it.
She says: “Wow, that is cool. But my grandmother was the most tremendous liar.
“My aunt said she was a romancer and she’d embroider life a bit, so I always felt that anything from my grandmother had to be taken with a pinch of salt.”
Terrible snob
Through her mother’s line, Anne is related to a family called Hayes, one of whom married Robert the Bruce’s daughter Princess Elizabeth in 1370.
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That links Anne to our present Royal Family and makes the Queen her 19th cousin.
The TV brainbox, who has been a “Chaser”, or quizzer, on the ITV game show since 2010, continues: “My mother was always deeply disapproving of the idea of anyone knowing about their ancestors.
“She’d say, ‘it doesn’t prove a thing, dear’.
“As a child I was always curious about this stuff and my mother was always very repressive.
“I think it was because on my mother’s mother’s side there’s quite a bit of posh, and my mum thought I’d grow up to be a terrible snob.
“But I’ve already grown up to be a terrible snob, so really there’s nothing to hide.”
Anne has spoken before about her unhappy childhood, caused in part by her autism.
It was not until she turned 45 that she was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a condition which is on the autism spectrum. On tonight’s exploration of her family history she says: “I tend to be in a way rather cynical about families.
“People say, ‘were you brought up in a nuclear family?’ and I was like, ‘it kind of exploded, so yeah’.
“My dad left home just before Christmas.
“He left my mother a note saying, ‘for Christmas 1970, one house free from husband’.” Anne — who is accompanied on the programme by fellow Chaser Shaun Wallace on his own family quest — begins her journey into the past at Albert Dock in Liverpool.
There she learns that her first cousin three times removed also held a place in history.
Andrew Cockburn was one of the few people to survive when the cruise ship Lusitania was struck by a World War One German torpedo off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915, killing 1,193 people.
A historian tells how Andrew, who was an engineer on the ship, clung to an upturned lifeboat for four hours before being rescued. Anne says: “All I knew was that someone on my family tree was on the Lusitania and survived.
“I’m going to have more pride in my family. Like Andrew Cockburn spends four hours clinging to an upturned lifeboat, just kind of quietly excellent people like that.”
Later Anne meets another historian at Edinburgh Castle, who reveals that her DNA shows she is 41 per cent Scottish.
Then at the city’s Anatomical Museum, she cradles a cast of the skull of her ancestor — Robert the Bruce.
She laughs and says: “My lower teeth go a bit like that!”
Shaun, 61, is shocked at the news of the former I’m A Celebrity inmate’s royal blood.
He tells Anne: “You’re a closet royal! Don’t be lording it over me now. I’m not calling you Queen Anne on The Chase — I refuse.”
Horrible time
Shaun’s own ancestral journey proves to be more emotional, as he and Anne travel to Jamaica where he learns that his family were slaves.
However, his six-times great grandmother, Jane Piper, fell in love with her slave owner and had three children with him.
The man freed Jane from slavery and when he died he left the entire estate, Southfields, to her.
Shaun says: “I’m glad I’m here, I can get close to the situation.
“The shockwaves of the cruelty of slavery will never ever leave people of our colour, of our race. It was a horrible time in our history.
“And they are still struggling, not only to come to terms with it but the struggle to have that acceptance that we are human beings and should be treated equally, irrespective of colour, race or creed.”
Shaun grew up in Wembley, North London and in 1984 was called to the Bar to practise law.
In 2004 he was a champion on the BBC’s Mastermind, then in 2009 he joined The Chase.
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He adds: “I’ve always been proud of my family. I’m proud of the colour of my skin, I’m proud of my heritage and I hope they’re looking down and they’re proud of what the eighth generation of their line has produced.”
- DNA Journey is on ITV tonight at 9pm.
