My Family Tree is Full of Losers

To whom it may concern,

Please take this as a formal complaint, to do with as you please.

I was first attracted to your services by the slogan: “Who will you discover?” Well, it turns out I discovered a bunch of losers.

I saw all the ads and shows on TV: celebrities finding greatness was a family trait, that they possess some kind of success gene. On one show famous gardener Alan Titchmarsh found out he was related to Richard the Lionhart. That sounded good to me, so I thought I’d give it a try.

I didn’t have time to sift through mouldy birth certificates and sensus records from 1846. Also, I imagine future generations will be able to see all sorts of stuff when they do family trees, not just their ancestors name and job, but also what their bank balance was, which was their favourite meme, and how many hours a day they spent on Reddit. So for posterity reasons I ordered a DNA kit from your website, and when it arrived, I spat in your jar and posted it back.

Cost me $149 plus shipping.

I thought to myself: “When my great-great-great-great grandson looks up his family tree and finds me, he’ll know I must have been a big shot, because I splurged $149 to have all the work done for me.”

Your ETA of 6–8 weeks came and went, and the results hadn’t come back.

I assumed this was because you’d found something juicy, perhaps a member of the royal family in one of the branches that was overcomplicating things, as the proper arrangements needed to be made to bestow upon me a suitable title. Perhaps me and Alan Titchmarsh were related, and thus, I too shared ancestry with Richard the Lionheart.

If anything, the delay made me more excited, but for posterity reasons I made sure to email you and give you hell, so my great-great-great-great grandson could see how much of a big shot I was.

A week later the results came. They told me I was 74% British, 14% Irish, and 12% Other Regions. How boring. Nothing about what Kings and Queens or Titchmarsh’s I was related to.

So I emailed you again and was told “that isn’t how the DNA tests work” and that “no where in the product description does it suggest otherwise”.

Nonetheless, after much back and forth you gave me a free month’s subscription and instructions on how build the tree myself. “There is no way around that”, I was told.

Reluctantly, over the course of several months, I was forced to give up my valuable time and energy to look this stuff up, and let me tell you, what a terrible waste that was.

Without exception, every single one of my ancestors was a complete loser.

I mean, I knew my parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles were losers. I’d met them. That’s all it took.

But I learned my great-grandfather on my mother’s side was a civil servant born in Bognor Regis in 1897, and my great-great-grandfather on my father’s side was a groundskeeper called Cecil. In got more depressing the further I dug.

This is what I paid my money for?

So, as you know, I emailed again, and demanded you amend these records in to something more amenable, maybe add Richard the Lionheart in there somewhere to spice things up, which you refused to do

“That isn’t how it works,” you told me again, this time, I noticed, much more sternly.

I asked instead that you destroy the records entirely so my family tree can start again from me, for posterity reasons. It would seem like I just phased into existence, as if from nowhere.

My great-great-great-great grandson would be stumped, and he’d probably assume I was some government spy who technically didn’t exist, or maybe some master criminal — a man of a thousand names and friends in the right places.

Either way, at least he wouldn’t know he was descended from a bunch of florists and factory workers and working class nobodies who died aged 33 due to dysentry.

You replied, begrudgingly it seemed, offering apologies and a free key chain with my family crest on it.

I accepted both, but again reiterated my previous demands that the digital records be erased and the physical ones be burned, and the ashes be sent to me in an urn so I may carry out a proper service as I saw fit — to cast my boring family in to the sea and be done with them.

You have yet to respond to this request, and I notice I have now been banned from using your services. Please be aware I am now taking the matter further, and have already contacted my local MP and the reputable Daily Sport newspaper, who have expressed an interest in running my story on their front page as a feature.

King Regards,

Mr Barry Titchmarsh-Lionheart

P.S.

As you may have noticed, I’ve decided to change my name to distance myself from those people you claim are my family, so please keep this in mind during my visit.

P.P.S.

You will be billed separately for the $20 deed poll cost.

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