Entertainment ‘is a family business’, says Emily Atack, comic actress and star of her eponymous show as well as The Inbetweeners and ‘Keith Lemon’ sketch shows, ‘There was never any other route for me.’ It soon becomes clear from her episode of Who Do You Think You Are? in the 2023 series that she certainly isn’t kidding about this: her mum Kate Robbins is a well-known comic actress too, her dad was in the original line-up of the successful 1970s band Child and her ‘Uncle Paul’ – technically a first cousin twice removed – is… Sir Paul McCartney. It’s not surprising therefore that entertainment is at the core of her journey in the genealogy show: ‘I would love to know more about the history of where all the talents came from,’ says Emily.

On her mum’s side, a lot of the love of entertainment came from Emily’s grandparents Betty (born Elizabeth Winifred Danher) and Mike (first name David) Robbins. The couple met at Butlins’ holiday camp in Pwlleli, Wales, where Mike worked as a redcoat entertainer; Betty fell for his charms and ended up becoming one too. Here’s their marriage index record at TheGenealogist:

Betty Danher was the crucial link to one part of Emily’s heritage in the entertainment world. Betty’s mother was born Annie McCartney, and her brother was Jim, father to a pair of cheeky brothers who became quite successful in the Liverpool music scene – Mike as a member of The Scaffold and his older brother ‘our Paul’, who did OK when he teamed up with a chap called John Lennon. We hear much more about the McCartney roots from ‘Uncle Mike’ himself in the show – and Betty had been a clear influence on the love of music in the family as she introduced the lads to classical music and even taught Paul how to play the ukulele.

WDYTYA also explores the notable career of Mike Robbins’ father, Ted, who was born in Wrexham (but with roots in Bristol): Edward Frederick Robbins (1877–1946) was something of a hero in the Welsh sporting world.

Here he is in the 1939 Register, listed as the Secretary of the Football Association of Wales:

By this time Ted had been in this role for 20 years and he continued to hold it until his death, making him the longest-serving holder of a job which gave him responsibility for running the finances of Welsh football, picking the teams and battling English football bureaucracy (you can find out the whole story in the programme). Looking at the map linked to his 1939 Register record at TheGenealogist, we can see that he lived in 99 Norman Road. Clicking on that map allows us to get a sense of the place through the site’s Map Explorer tool – Norman Road was just north of the barracks near the bottom of this mid-20th century OS map, and Wrexham football stadium is at the racecourse site at the top left, just a couple of miles away:

Perhaps we might imagine town hero Ted striding to the football ground – the oldest international stadium in the world, in fact – greeting people on his way through the town. We can even picture some of the scene – here is Queen Street from 1908, just before he took up his vital football role in 1909:

Emily’s episode turns next to her dad’s family – the Atacks, who hailed from the Pontefract area in West Yorkshire. It transpires that music was deeply important on this side, too: Emily’s great-grandfather Bill Atack, for example, played the saxophone, clarinet and vibraphone. There’s also a fantastic discovery about one of Bill’s children who very much carved her own career in entertainment – but you’ll have to watch the show to hear about that one!

Bill himself grew up in a Yorkshire mining community. Here he is in the 1911 census at TheGenealogist, listed as a coal miner hewer at the age of 26 – and we learn that his wife was an earlier Emily Atack, and indeed his mother had been an Emily too.

Here Bill’s birthplace is listed as Nostell, and that helps us use the site’s Master Search tool to track down the next generation back. Thirty years earlier, here is a newly married Joseph Atack – married to the earlier Emily – based at 21 Nostell Row:

There’s a sad story to be told in the show about Joe’s life – again, focused around work in the mines. Modern-day Emily is shown an old OS map of the Nostell Colliery area, including the row where Joe lived and Bill was born – you can see it here at the bottom of TheGenealogist’s copy of the map:

And at the top right of this map is the church where you can see Emily pictured at the start of this article. She began the show saying ‘I’m looking for physical proof of where I belong’ – and this will turn out to be a strong candidate for exactly that.