Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC2): THE BBC's celebrity family history show has proved one of the year's biggest ratings winners.

Perhaps it's no surprise, as it combines snooping on a famous face's personal life with a history lesson about the social order of a bygone era.

The search by Darlington-raised comedian, Vic Reeves, for the truth about his maternal grandfather, Simeon Leigh, had plenty of both. He called it "your own personal soap opera", adding: "I suppose what everyone wants is some scandal, a murder or something grand."

There was a bit of confusion to clear up at the start. Vic Reeves is his stage name, his real name is Jim Moir. Generations of males in the family have been called Jim, so the man the public know as Vic is called Rod, his middle name, by his family.

The mystery surrounding Simeon Leigh was harder to unravel. Reeves wanted to shed light on the dark areas of his life, mainly the suggestion that he was a bigamist.

A photograph of him on the beach at Scarborough in 1929, looking smart and tanned in wing collar and spats, indicated that this was a man to whom appearances were important. He was 50 when he married Lillian, Vic's maternal grandmother.

Detective work established that he had three sons with his first wife. No record of a divorce or Mary's death was found. Simeon abandoned his wife and children for a new life. In those days, the cost of divorce deterred many from going through the process, despite the threat of imprisonment.

Reeves revealed to his mother Audrey, who still lives in Darlington, that she had three half-brothers. But he couldn't understand how his grandfather could have abandoned family like that. "How do you go through life and not mention your three sons?" he asked.

He visited the house in Hull where Simeon lived and finding original features said: "This is the closest I've got to him. He'd have had his hand on this banister." Simeon was a spinner of yarns who made out he was better than he was. He wasn't the estate manager he claimed, but a butler from several generations of servants.

Reeves could connect with his great-grandfather, who worked as a gamekeeper on an estate. The comedian has always felt that life on the land has held an appeal and lives in the country now.

The programme ended with the obligatory meeting with a long-lost relative. Simeon's granddaughter from his first marriage was tracked down in Liverpool. Reeves and his mother journeyed there to meet his mum's niece and his cousin, Susan.

Not only didn't she know of Simeon's other life, she didn't know who Vic Reeves was. "Should I know you?," she asked.

"Not unless you're a Vic Reeves fan," came the reply.

Published: 15/12/2004