Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville and comedian John Bishop make unlikely friends.
One is privately educated and famed for playing a lord, the other a rags-to-riches working class comic.
But a chance meeting in a Covid vaccine centre during lockdown made the stars close pals and now they have discovered a connection deeper than they ever imagined.
In scenes to be shown on ITV ’s DNA Journey next week, the pair cement their friendship on an ancestry road trip – during which the show’s expert drops a bombshell.
It turns out that Hugh’s ancestor John Freeman worked in a family bakery just four doors down from John’s ancestor Andrew Keegan’s music shop on Capel Street, Dublin.
Both union men, it is thought they marched together in support of workers’ rights in the mid-1840s.
The stars are blown away.
John says to Hugh: “I thought it was a coincidence that you were at the vaccine centre. To find out that generations before, our ancestors were working within 30 yards of each other... then to discover they were on a march together on the same day that started the path for discussions for Irish independence... staggering.”
Hugh adds: “That is quite spooky. It’s the sliding doors of fate and time.
“Not only are we friends, but I’d like to think that Andrew and John were friends back in the day.”
The 59-year-old actor, known for the Paddington movies as well as Downton Abbey, met 56-year-old Liverpudlian John when he moved to the South Downs.
Hugh says: “My wife and I were volunteering down at the vaccine centre in Midhurst, our local town in West Sussex, and he pitched up.”
As the pair embark on their ancestry journey for the ITV show, John adds: “Anyone watching will be surprised that we’re mates because we’ll find that you’re born of lords and I’m born of footmen.”
John, who has always felt a deep affinity with Ireland, discovers a trailblazing ancestor who made the journey from his home country to Liverpool.
His three times great-grandfather Patrick Reardon built a business in the booming salt industry. Hugh finds ancestor Richard Bonniwell – which is Hugh’s middle name and inspired his stage surname (he’s really a Williams).
In the 1820s Bonniwell, a naval architect, helped make sailors’ working conditions safer.
*DNA Journey starts Tuesday 7 March, ITV and ITVX, 9pm.
