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Kevin Clifton has opened up about how his other half Stacey Dooley reacted to him exploring his ancestry on Who Do You Think You Are?, admitting that she was ‘jealous’ after she was rejected by the BBC series.
In January this year, the former Strictly Come Dancing partners welcomed their first child, a daughter called Minnie, having first started dating in 2019.
While the past few months have marked a massive change for the present and future of their family, Kevin recently took a trip to the past to discover more about his lineage, discovering a fascinating history that saw him travel all the way to Canada to learn of a legendary female relative who led an extraordinary and inspirational life.
The 40-year-old spoke exclusively to Metro.co.uk about his experience, revealing how Stacey, 36, responded when she found out he was being granted a full episode of the beloved genealogy show.
In 2021, the TV presenter shared that while she had previously been approached to take part in the programme, she was later turned down because the research team found ‘nothing interesting enough’ about her family to fill an hour, given ‘it’s all Ireland, Ireland, Ireland, Liverpool, Liverpool, Liverpool’.
When asked whether there was any sense of jealousy or competition between them, given Kevin was given the opportunity to follow through with an episode, the professional dancer replied: ‘Yeah, she was like, “No way! How has this happened?”’
Kevin goes on an extraordinary journey exploring his family tree (Picture: Wall to Wall/Stephen Perry)
The couple share one daughter together (Picture: David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images)
He continued: ‘I remember when she got her file of stuff from Who Do You Think You Are?, and we were so excited about it and there was this massive family tree and we spread it over the kitchen floor, and it was like generations of Irish and Scousers as far as the eye could see. She was gutted not to get to do an episode.’
So when he ended up doing an episode, Stacey was apparently surprised to find out that there were interesting nuggets in Kevin’s family history that were worth exploring further.
‘When I was doing it, she was like, “You’ve got to be kidding me! What have they found?” And I was like, “Well they must have found something interesting, for there to be this episode,”’ he recollected.
‘Then when I kept calling her like from Canada and telling her, “Oh my god this, and oh my god that,” and telling her all about it, she was like, “This is insane. It’s absolutely insane.”’
Kevin found out he was going to be a dad weeks before filming (Picture: Instagram/@sjdooley)
Looking back on the journey he went on overall, Kevin remembered that Stacey had jokingly described him as ‘the most English person I know’, when she predicted that ‘there can’t possibly be anything interesting or worthwhile or exotic’ in his family history.
‘I was like, it’s either going to be just a lot of dancers, and it’s going to be an episode about dancing, or it’s going to be Grimsby-focused and it’s going to be fishermen from Grimsby on my mum’s side. So for it to go where it ended up going, which I knew nothing about – like I had absolutely no knowledge of – was just crazy,’ he shared.
‘They say to you, “Don’t ask any questions. We don’t want you to know, we don’t want you doing your own research. We want you to let us do our thing, and then we’ll take you on this journey.” They said, “Okay, you’ve got an episode, you’re going to be in our hands for two weeks.” So I packed a suitcase for two weeks.
‘The first day I’m sat in my mom and dad’s kitchen in Grimsby, and then a couple of hours later, they said, “We’re flying to Canada in the morning.” I was mind blown.’
Kevin delves into the history of a family legend surrounding an ancestor (Picture: Linda Scheler)
On Sunday March 19, Kevin paid tribute to Stacey on Instagram to mark Mother’s Day, sharing an adorable picture of her holding their two-month-old daughter.
In his caption, he wrote at the time: ‘I’ve watched my girl @sjdooley become an absolute superwoman over the last couple of months (as if she wasn’t already). The most wonderful mum to our daughter Minnie. Love you baby. Happy 1st Mother’s Day.’
Kevin’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? is available to watch on Thursday June 22 at 9pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer
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‘She was like, “No way! How has this happened?”’