It\u2019s no wonder that she\u2019s a showbiz star, because as she says at the start of her episode of Who Do You Think You Are?<\/em><\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s a family business\u2026 there was never any other route for me.\u201d Her mother Kate Robbins is an actor and singer-songwriter and her father Keith Atack is a musician and former member of the band Child. Sir Paul McCartney is her first cousin twice removed and her grandparents, aunts and uncles are also in showbusiness.<\/p>\n \u201cI would love to know more about the history of where the talents came from,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m actually looking for physical proof of where I belong, so I can start to settle down a bit and calm down and feel like I\u2019ve achieved that sense of belonging somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n To start, Emily visits her mother Kate to reminisce about her maternal grandparents. Emily\u2019s grandfather David Michael \u2018Mike\u2019 Robbins was a Redcoat at a Butlin\u2019s holiday camp<\/a>. He met her grandmother Elizabeth \u2018Betty\u2019 Danher when she was a guest at the camp, and he both recruited her as a Redcoat and married her. Being a Redcoat meant that Mike loved performing and was knowledgeable about showbusiness. One person who asked his advice on showbiz was Betty\u2019s first cousin, Paul McCartney. Kate shows Emily a letter Paul wrote to Mike when he was young, describing the first gigs played by his band, the Beatles \u2013 although, hedging his bets, he also asks if he and his bandmates can work at Butlin\u2019s for the summer.<\/p>\n Emily goes to the original Butlin\u2019s in Skegness, where she meets historian Dr Kathryn Ferry. Kathryn shows her pictures of her grandparents as Redcoats and tells her how important they were as \u201cfriends, philosophers, guides\u201d and entertainers to the Butlin\u2019s guests.<\/p>\n \u201cI just feel such a huge amount of respect for them,\u201d Emily reflects. \u201cThey brought joy and happiness to people.\u201d<\/p>\n Next, Emily goes to visit her \u2018Uncle Mike\u2019 \u2013 Mike McCartney, Paul McCartney\u2019s brother. Mike and Paul\u2019s father Jim McCartney formed a jazz band called Jim Mac\u2019s band. Annie\u2019s great grandparents Annie McCartney and Bert Danher were also members. Annie\u2019s father Joseph \u2018Joe\u2019 McCartney used to play the tuba in a brass band in Liverpool.<\/p>\n Emily goes to visit the bandstand where Joe played in Stanley Park. She meets Professor Jerry Smith. He tells her that Joe, like many brass band musicians at the time, made his start in the factory brass band where he worked, a tobacco factory. He also shows her census records<\/a> to help trace her family history back further. The McCartney family originally came to Liverpool from Ireland in the 19th century with the surname<\/a> McCarthy, which changes in different records. For Irish<\/a> immigrants in Liverpool, music such as sea shanties was an important way of expressing their identity.<\/p>\n Next, Emily wants to find out about her grandfather Mike\u2019s Welsh heritage. He was always obsessed with Wrexham football club. His marriage certificate says that his father Ted Robbins was a \u2018football secretary\u2019, so Emily wants to find out what that means. She goes to Wrexham Football Club to meet Professor Martin Johns. He tells her that Ted was Secretary of the Football Association of Wales. He was responsible for picking the players for the Welsh football team \u2013 which often meant battling with English football teams to get them to release their Welsh players to play for the Welsh national team. Ted was key to keeping Welsh football going at a time when it was an important expression of Welsh<\/a> national pride.<\/p>\n Going to visit Ted\u2019s grave at Wrexham Cemetery, Emily reflects: \u201cSport and music\u2026 they\u2019ve got so many similarities, because it\u2019s about being a team and being together and getting through hard times and feeling like you\u2019re a part of something.\u201d<\/p>\n Emily then goes to Pontefract in Yorkshire to visit her father Keith Atack and grandmother Doris. She learns the origins of the surname Atack \u2013 it\u2019s an Anglo-Saxon name meaning \u2018at the oak\u2019. She also learns about her great aunt Doreen (stage name Doreen McKay), who was another performer in the family \u2013 she made her fortune as a professional whistler, known as the \u201cchampion girl whistler of the world\u201d.<\/p>\n Taking her family tree back further, Emily learns that both her great grandfather and great great grandfather were coal miners<\/a>. Her 2x great grandfather Joseph Atack was a colliery banksman \u2013 responsible for overseeing the men and materials going in and out of the mine. An old newspaper<\/a> article shows that in 1886, a miner, Richard Brundle, died in an accident at the colliery when he was crushed by the cage lift. The banksman \u2013 who could have been Joseph \u2014 was in charge of the cage, but the inquest ruled that it was accidental death, for which the banksman wasn\u2019t responsible.<\/p>\n Tragically, three years later Joseph died by suicide. It was ruled to be due to \u201ctemporary insanity\u201d. Joseph had said he was afraid that he was going to be charged with manslaughter because of a death at the coal mine, although there is no evidence to support this.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no help back then,\u201d Emily says, \u201cand I think people are still traumatised by that, that they feel like there\u2019s no help. I\u2019ve always been someone who struggled with mental health, but I\u2019ve had the help of therapists, doctors, everything like that, and I just can\u2019t imagine our lives without that help.\u201d<\/p>\n To finish, Emily visits Wragby parish church. Fortunately, Joseph was buried there, at a time when people who died by suicide were sometimes not allowed to be buried on consecrated ground. Emily\u2019s family tree shows that four generations of Atacks worshipped there.<\/p>\n Deeply moved, Emily concludes: \u201cI\u2019ve been told my whole life my family\u2019s in showbiz and everyone\u2019s very talented, but to learn that my family were actually rooted with a lot of hardship when it came to grafting and working and risking their lives to raise families \u2013 they\u2019re the bits that I\u2019m walking away truly so unbelievably proud of. I feel like I can walk away from this with so much peace in my heart and so much admiration for people who aren\u2019t with us anymore, and I think you have to carry those people with you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Rosemary Collins is the features editor of\u00a0<\/em>Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n The Inbetweeners star Emily Atack discovered generations of performers in her family tree when she appeared on Who Do You Think You Are? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":25836,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"6"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/07\/emily-atack-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-scaled.jpg",2560,1340,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/07\/emily-atack-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/07\/emily-atack-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-300x157.jpg",300,157,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/07\/emily-atack-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-768x402.jpg",768,402,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/07\/emily-atack-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-1024x536.jpg",800,419,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/07\/emily-atack-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-1536x804.jpg",1536,804,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/07\/emily-atack-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-2048x1072.jpg",2048,1072,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The Inbetweeners star Emily Atack discovered generations of performers in her family tree when she appeared on Who Do You Think You Are?","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/25835"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\""Emily\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/26\/2023\/07\/Mike-9c4caaf.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C325"\" "\\"\"Emily\\"\/")
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