Spice Girl explores Limerick roots tonight on TV

MELANIE Chisholm, more commonly known as ‘Sporty Spice’, will explore her Limerick roots tonight on BBC One.

Melanie, or Mel C, will star in an episode of the hit TV series ‘Who do you think you are?’, in which she makes a special stop in the Treaty City to learn about her Limerick ancestry.

In the episode airing at 9pm tonight, she discovers her connection to tenant farmers in Limerick, who endured harrowing hardships all too common in Irish history.

The singer, who makes up one fifth of the world-famous girl group the Spice Girls, “shed tears” as she discovered her family's connection to Shannonside.

Dr Paul O'Brien, a historian and lecturer at Mary Immaculate College, revealed in a post on X that he spent a day in August last year recording a segment for the episode with "the lovely Melanie Chisholm aka Sporty Spice/Mel C of the legendary Spice Girls".

He shared a pic of a note given to him and signed by Mel C, saying "Dear Paul, Lovely to meet you. Thank you for all the info! Melanie", with a love heart and smiley face drawn on the page.

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Melanie's great-great-great-grandparents, Patrick Flaherty and Catherine Burns, were tenant farmers in the county when the Famine struck in 1845, she learns in the episode.

After the couple’s landlord put the farm up for sale, they moved to Limerick city and worked as “landless labourers”, but eventually emigrated to Liverpool as potato crops continued to fail.

The family’s struggles far from over; records showed that her ancestors lost their eight-month-old son, Edmund, while finding their way in their new life abroad.

Reflecting on “the worst hardships that you could imagine” endured by her three-times great-grandparents, Mel C said it made “so much sense to realise why my grandmother and great-grandmother were so stoic and strong”.

The Spice Girls star, 50, noted that learning about her family’s history made it clear to her why her family “have gone on to be really tough”. 

“I know without my family fighting for their survival through the generations, I wouldn’t be here at all.”