banksie:
I wish I could remember the guy's name but there was a TV show I saw a year or two ago in which a proudly racist individual and (I think) a BNP activist - claiming to to be `Brit' through and through - had his ancestry traced and found that his great grandfather had actually come from somewhere like Romania or Armenia and had created an entirely false history once he'd been naturalised.

The presenter was the art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon and the programme, on Channel 4, was one of the best and most incisive of the year. Carol Thatcher participated and was shown DNA evidence that her family had roots in, among other places, the Middle East. I recall very well the most vociferous of "Brits" who had all sorts of nasty "foreign" origins - he could barely speak when presented with the evidence. One very hoity-toity woman threatened to sue the programme makers, but I believe nothing came of it.

Anyone with a modicum of sense - particularly anyone who's delved deeply into their family history (as I have for nearly 30 years) - will know that you just can't play these silly BNP-style race games. In fact, they're not going on race, as such, merely on skin colour, i.e. the bleeding obvious. Such stupidity is mind-boggling. I think it was possibly Joan Armatrading who, when asked if she'd like to be given money to go "home", replied, "What - to Birmingham?"

Simple mathematics (x2) will tell you that, unless you know the exact origins of all ancestors (2 parents, 4 gandparents, 8 g-grandparents, 16 g-g-grandparents, 32 g-g-g-grandparents, etc.), assumptions about being being a "true Brit" or anything else are cuckoo.