Lee Mack's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? aired on Monday, starting us off with Lee finding out about his fellow comedian, ancestor Billy Mac.
Billy's story encompassed both variety/music hall performances, and the Western Front in World War One.
Billy performed with a gallows-humour style comedy troupe called 'The Optimists' on the front lines.
Also part of Lee's episode was a look at his maternal family in Ireland.
Life wasn't that easy for his ancestors, and Lee was perhaps a little quick to judge an unmarried mother who emigrated to Canada while leaving her son in her parents' care.
Often, family members who emigrated would send money home to their relatives - additionally, not having her as another mouth to feed would also have benefitted the family financially.
Of course, not knowing the exact circumstances, it may have been just as Lee suspected at first - or something else entirely.
That's the thing about trying to understand the actions of people in the past - without more context, it can be very difficult to understand how acceptable something was.
Lee did begin to wonder whether he was being too harsh, and judging his ancestor too much by modern standards, when the conditions and economic difficulties his family were in became clearer - it can be worthwhile to understand that survival is often the top motivating factor behind the actions of our forebears!
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