Friday 29 August 2014

Brendan O'Carroll most watched WDYTYA? for 3 years

Last night's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? on BBC TV was watched by 5.3million viewers, the highest audience recorded during the last three series of the popular genealogy programme.

The programme set out to uncover the murderer of Peter O'Carroll, the grandfather of comedian Brendan O'Carroll, the creator of Mrs Brown's Boys, who was shot in an execution style assault at his hardware shop in Manor Street, Dublin in October 1920.

As the pieces of the story came together, the name of the probable murderer was revealed through a Witness Statement in the Bureau of Military History collection.

This Bureau was set up in 1947 to gather statements from the individuals who either participatated in or witnessed events connected with the Independence movement between 1913 and 1921.

Still relatively unknown, this collection has been available online, free, for just over a year. You can find out more about the Bureau of Military History Witness Statements in this article by Nicola Morris MAPGI, director of Dublin-based Timeline Research Ireland, the company which carried out the research for the Brendan O'Carroll episode.

The 60-minute-long programme itself is available to watch via the BBC's iplayer for the next two months.