THE Chase’s Anne Hegarty has revealed the ‘terrible’ reason her mum didn’t want her to dig into their family tree.
Anne, 63, is one of the famous faces taking part in the new series of DNA Journey on ITV.
Anne, known as The Governess on The Chase, and her quizzing co-star Shaun Wallace, 61, delved into the respective family trees in the opening episode of the new series.
However, Anne – who discovers she is related to Royalty – revealed how her mum had never wanted her to explore her family tree when she was growing up.
She told The Celeb Report’s TV Mag: “I did know a fair bit about my family. There were certain mysteries I wanted sorted.
“There were certain things I didn’t know, certain names that were missing from the family tree so I wanted to find out about those. And even the things I knew about, I thought I’d like to know more about.
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“As a child I was always curious about this stuff and my mother was always very repressive and: ‘No, no, no. Nobody needs to know about their family tree.’
“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.”
While her mum wasn’t keen on researching her family back in the day, Anne is keen to show her what she found out by watching the show together.
She said: “My mum’s suffering with dementia so she can’t appreciate… So what myself and my brother are going to do is go to the home and watch it with her.”
She continued with a laugh: “My dad’s family were very excited and furnished me with lots of photos and then of course we didn’t really do any research into my dad’s family. I’ll have to explain that to them.
“My brother was interested. Like I said, my brother and I were brought up to believe that we shouldn’t be interested in this sort of thing.
“But both Shaun and I did DNA analysis and I’ve shared mine with my brother because obviously he has the same DNA. But I’m not going to divulge it until the show comes out.
DNA Journey starts on Tuesday, April 5 at 9pm on ITV. TV Mag is available for free every Saturday, only in The Celeb Report.
