Watch Danny Dyer discover he’s related to royalty on Who Do You Think You Are?

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Danny Dyer, star of Run For Your Wife, nominee for Britain’s Sexiest Soap Star and writer of the greatest tweet of all time, is the 22-times great-grandson of Edward III. ‘People are going to expect me to be related to criminals,” he said at the top of the latest episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, the BBC’s celebrity genealogy show. “But I’d like to freak them out and be descended from aristocracy.” Danny Dyer on Who Do You Think You Are: The best bits It initially did look as though Dyer’s lineage would mostly be full of rogues and scallywags, his immediate family history throwing up criminals and workhouses, but all that changed when he found out his 10-times great-grandfather Robert was landed gentry - as Dyer described him, a “proper geezer, as game as you like”. “I’ll say it again - ‘I am a direct descendent of Thomas Cromwell.’” Danny was particularly delighted to hear that Cromwell’s father ran a tavern.