It's not just Danny Dyer who is related to royalty - we all are, geneticist says

Being related to royalty is no big deal, a BBC presenter has said, because "literally every person in Europe is directly descended from Charlemagne".

Adam Rutherford, a geneticist who presents the Radio 4 programme Inside Science, said his calculations reveal that almost every Briton is related to the 14th century king Edward III. 

He told an audience at the Chalke Valley History Festival that his team had worked out that the chance that someone born in the 1970s was not related to Edward III was vanishingly small, at 0.0000000000000000000000000001 .

Adam Rutherford

He said: "I was sitting there, thinking ‘I think I can. I think I can compute this’. I worked with some of my colleages at UCL, and the question became what is the probability that anyone is directly descended from Edward III?"

He added: "Looking around this room, every single one of you is a direct descendant of Edward III. 

"Everyone from this room is directly descended between 21 and 24 generations from Edward III."

For celebrities, discovering they have royal blood has become practically a rite of passage. Comedian Alexander Armstrong, Olympic rower Sir Matthew Pinsent and Danny Dyer were among those who found out they have royal relatives on the BBC television programme Who Do You Think You Are . 

Dyer's excitable reaction when told he was related to Edward III went viral online last year. 

The EastEnders actor, who is known for his traditional East London background, was shocked and delighted by the revelation and said he would celebrate by buying a "massive ruff" and said he "could not compute" that he shared a bloodline with the monarch.

Rutherford said the programme capitalised on finding famous relatives for its subjects, but was misleading viewers into thinking this was rare. 

He said: "When you do family trees and in things like ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ and any form of genealogy, the real key comes in managing to to identify someone of fame or infamy in your family tree.

"And the reason I quip that story is because this is fundamentally not how genetics works."

He added: "Literally every person in Europe is directly descended from Charlemagne. Literally, not metaphorically. You have a direct lineage which leads to Charlemagne.”