9th November 2004
Ian Hislop’s Jersey connection revealed
Ian Hislop is best known as a team captain on the BBC’s satirical quiz, Have I Got News For You and as editor of the London-based magazine, Private Eye. However, on 9 November 2004 he was the subject of the BBC’s family history documentary series, Who Do You Think You Are. The episode uncovered his Jersey roots.
As the BBC reveals, his mother, Helen Rosemarie Beddows, “grew up on Jersey and was living there when the Nazis occupied the Channel Islands in 1940, but she rarely talked to Ian about this time, and the occupation of the Channel Islands remains in general one of the least described episodes of World War Two”.
Beddows, whom the Jersey Evening Post said was born in Rue du Galet, Millbrook, in 1929, chose to stay in Jersey throughout the occupation. She left the island following the war, but returned in the 1950s.
In advance of the programme being broadcast – when researchers were still digging into his past – Hislop travelled to Jersey to visit some locations from his family history and was interviewed on BBC Radio Jersey.
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Other events that occured in November
MP worries about Jersey’s butter consumption
- British MPs debated the amount of butter that Jersey was consuming in 1919, with suggestions that it might be being sent to France.
- Read more…
The States votes to flood Queen’s Valley
- The States of Jersey votes in favour of flooding Queen's Valley to create a new reservoir to meet the island's water needs.
- Read more…
Ian Hislop’s Jersey connection revealed
- Presenter, writer and editor Ian Hislop discovered that he had connections to Jersey on the BBC show Who Do You Think You Are?
- Read more…
Jersey coast is designated a Ramsar wetland
- Jersey’s south east coast was designated a Ramsar wetland because of its important reefs, shingle shores and lagoons.
- Read more…