Tuesday's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? featured singer Pixie Lott.
Pixie seemed to approach the whole thing with a level of eager naivety that was quite refreshing!
Originally believing her family came from Italy, the exploration of that particular part of her family soon revealed the truth.
Pixie's family had, indeed, been part of an Italian church in London. But they were Irish. They worshipped at that church because it was their nearest Catholic church.
Which shows how things can become muddled, years later, in the telling.
It's also entirely possible, if not likely, that Pixie's relatives had picked up some words of Italian during their time worshipping with their Italian congregation - which may have further muddied the details passed down in the family.
The reality of the lives of Pixie's ancestors, as it was for so many Irish immigrants in the 19th Century, was extreme poverty.
Pixie learned that they ended up in and out of the workhouse, and was understandably upset to learn the policies regarding families in most workhouses - children separated from parents, boys separated from girls, and sometimes younger children separated from older children.
Children could also be sent to different workhouses, or to foster homes, without their parents being consulted, and sometimes not even notified.
Workhouses may have been the start of our welfare system, but the Victorian view of poverty and the poor often lacked humanity.
We jumped around quite a bit with this episode, also touching on the World War One POW status of one of Pixie's ancestors on the Lott side of her family.
Many people forget that there were POWs in the First World War, as well as the Second, and what many of these, mostly men, suffered was deeply traumatic and incredibly horrible.
We ended on a much brighter note though, with Pixie finding several of her military forebears also had musical ability, being members of the military band.
A reminder that while it may be too late for Christmas orders, Christmas gift certificates are still available! You can find more details here.
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