Born on 18 December 1989 in Luton, Emily Atack is an English actor, comedian and television personality. She is best known for playing Charlotte Hinchcliffe on the E4 comedy The Inbetweeners, as well as presenting the ITV2 comedy series The Emily Atack Show and appearing on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and Dancing on Ice.
It’s no wonder that she’s a showbiz star, because as she says at the start of her episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, “It’s a family business… there was never any other route for me.” Her mother Kate Robbins is an actor and singer-songwriter and her father Keith Atack is a musician and former member of the band Child. Sir Paul McCartney is her first cousin twice removed and her grandparents, aunts and uncles are also in showbusiness.
“I would love to know more about the history of where the talents came from,” she says. “I’m actually looking for physical proof of where I belong, so I can start to settle down a bit and calm down and feel like I’ve achieved that sense of belonging somewhere.”
To start, Emily visits her mother Kate to reminisce about her maternal grandparents. Emily’s grandfather David Michael ‘Mike’ Robbins was a Redcoat at a Butlin’s holiday camp. He met her grandmother Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Danher when she was a guest at the camp, and he both recruited her as a Redcoat and married her. Being a Redcoat meant that Mike loved performing and was knowledgeable about showbusiness. One person who asked his advice on showbiz was Betty’s first cousin, Paul McCartney. Kate shows Emily a letter Paul wrote to Mike when he was young, describing the first gigs played by his band, the Beatles – although, hedging his bets, he also asks if he and his bandmates can work at Butlin’s for the summer.
Emily goes to the original Butlin’s in Skegness, where she meets historian Dr Kathryn Ferry. Kathryn shows her pictures of her grandparents as Redcoats and tells her how important they were as “friends, philosophers, guides” and entertainers to the Butlin’s guests.
“I just feel such a huge amount of respect for them,” Emily reflects. “They brought joy and happiness to people.”
Next, Emily goes to visit her ‘Uncle Mike’ – Mike McCartney, Paul McCartney’s brother. Mike and Paul’s father Jim McCartney formed a jazz band called Jim Mac’s band. Annie’s great grandparents Annie McCartney and Bert Danher were also members. Annie’s father Joseph ‘Joe’ McCartney used to play the tuba in a brass band in Liverpool.
Emily goes to visit the bandstand where Joe played in Stanley Park. She meets Professor Jerry Smith. He tells her that Joe, like many brass band musicians at the time, made his start in the factory brass band where he worked, a tobacco factory. He also shows her census records to help trace her family history back further. The McCartney family originally came to Liverpool from Ireland in the 19th century with the surname McCarthy, which changes in different records. For Irish immigrants in Liverpool, music such as sea shanties was an important way of expressing their identity.
Next, Emily wants to find out about her grandfather Mike’s Welsh heritage. He was always obsessed with Wrexham football club. His marriage certificate says that his father Ted Robbins was a ‘football secretary’, so Emily wants to find out what that means. She goes to Wrexham Football Club to meet Professor Martin Johns. He tells her that Ted was Secretary of the Football Association of Wales. He was responsible for picking the players for the Welsh football team – which often meant battling with English football teams to get them to release their Welsh players to play for the Welsh national team. Ted was key to keeping Welsh football going at a time when it was an important expression of Welsh national pride.
Going to visit Ted’s grave at Wrexham Cemetery, Emily reflects: “Sport and music… they’ve got so many similarities, because it’s about being a team and being together and getting through hard times and feeling like you’re a part of something.”
Emily then goes to Pontefract in Yorkshire to visit her father Keith Atack and grandmother Doris. She learns the origins of the surname Atack – it’s an Anglo-Saxon name meaning ‘at the oak’. She also learns about her great aunt Doreen (stage name Doreen McKay), who was another performer in the family – she made her fortune as a professional whistler, known as the “champion girl whistler of the world”.
Taking her family tree back further, Emily learns that both her great grandfather and great great grandfather were coal miners. Her 2x great grandfather Joseph Atack was a colliery banksman – responsible for overseeing the men and materials going in and out of the mine. An old newspaper article shows that in 1886, a miner, Richard Brundle, died in an accident at the colliery when he was crushed by the cage lift. The banksman – who could have been Joseph — was in charge of the cage, but the inquest ruled that it was accidental death, for which the banksman wasn’t responsible.
Tragically, three years later Joseph died by suicide. It was ruled to be due to “temporary insanity”. Joseph had said he was afraid that he was going to be charged with manslaughter because of a death at the coal mine, although there is no evidence to support this.
“There was no help back then,” Emily says, “and I think people are still traumatised by that, that they feel like there’s no help. I’ve always been someone who struggled with mental health, but I’ve had the help of therapists, doctors, everything like that, and I just can’t imagine our lives without that help.”
To finish, Emily visits Wragby parish church. Fortunately, Joseph was buried there, at a time when people who died by suicide were sometimes not allowed to be buried on consecrated ground. Emily's family tree shows that four generations of Atacks worshipped there.
Deeply moved, Emily concludes: “I’ve been told my whole life my family’s in showbiz and everyone’s very talented, but to learn that my family were actually rooted with a lot of hardship when it came to grafting and working and risking their lives to raise families – they’re the bits that I’m walking away truly so unbelievably proud of. I feel like I can walk away from this with so much peace in my heart and so much admiration for people who aren’t with us anymore, and I think you have to carry those people with you.”
Rosemary Collins is the features editor of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine
