Find out the link between Kilkenny and TV personality Paddy McGuinness!

A Kilkenny historian made her BBC debut last month, featuring on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’

Judy Bolger of St Patrick’s College in Carlow teamed up with popular UK-based entertainment presenter Paddy McGuinness to help him discover his unknown Irish roots.

Bolger, from Graignamanagh on the Kilkenny-Carlow border works in the Academic Resource Office as the Writing Development Tutor in the college and while every day she crosses paths with people of many interests and persuasions, crossing paths with the former Top Gear and Take Me Out host certainly wasn’t an every day experience.

McGuinness whose name suggests Irish connections was unaware of any link to the Emerald Isle but following filming of the episode in November, the comic and TV host opened a whole new chapter in his family’s story, finding his roots in Ballina in County Mayo.

But as the Graignamanagh woman turned from historian to fairy godmother, how did she end up changing the landscape of the McGuinness family tree forever?

“They (programme producers) do a lot of the research and they look for an expert in the field to contextualise what they found out,” the academic told the Kilkenny People.

“They found his great-grandmother and grandfather’s wedding register and it said they were a runaway match which sounded romantic and they wanted to find out more about it,” she recalled.

Step up to the mark, Judy Bolger who not only plies her trade in Carlow College, is also a PhD researcher in the department of Modern Irish History at Trinity College, Dublin. Her PhD examines the social discourse surrounding impoverished mothers and women’s experiences of maternity and motherhood in Irish workhouses during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

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She received a first-class M.Phil. degree in Modern Irish History from Trinity College, Dublin (2017) in which her thesis research examined the social history of Irish breastfeeding during the nineteenth century.

She also holds a first-class Honours B.A. degree in English and History from Carlow College, St Patrick’s (2016) where her under-graduate thesis researched reproductive insanity.

But despite a glittering career in her field to date, was it a surprise to get a call to take part in a BBC project?

“The history world is quite small, there’s usually two or three experts in each area but yes,” she said but admitted it was a total surprise.

“I enjoyed it (being part of the episode), they (the producers) gave me the jist of it and they wanted me to contextualise it a bit more,” she commented.

“They (the McGuinness family) were weavers in the linen industry in Ballina even though the linen industry would have predominantly been based in Belfast so I had to do a bit of research to find out more on how it found its way over to the west,” she stated.

“So they wanted to know a bit about their social life, what it would have been like living in that time so looking at registers and reports.”

The programme not only sparked interest with evening-time viewers, it sparked some into action who reached out to Judy following the broadcast of the programme.

“I got contacted by a few random people on Facebook and Instagram, asking for help in finding their families,” she said, adding, today’s generation seem to have a healthy interest in discovering their family roots.

The local historian claimed quirky inside-family information, which helped Paddy disscover a new branch on his family tree, can unlock the door to unknown family connections and ultimately the discovery brand new family members that you may never have even contemplated.

“It’s very exciting,” Judy commented.

“Paddy even made the joke himself, his name is Paddy McGuinness and he hadn’t a clue whereabouts he was from but nowadays (with modern technology) and newspaper searches you’d be surprised what you can find out about your own family,” she continued.

“A lot of times the record can confirm stories that families have passed down and often on the flip side you might find stories you weren’t expecting to find.”

And be it to earn citizenship, find a long-lost loved one or medical treatment, our quest for knowledge continues!