British comedian discovers he is... Indian!

LONDON: Well-known British comedian and theatre actor Alistair McGowan’s search for his roots has led him to discover he is Anglo-Indian — a fact his father tried to hide from him all his life.

“The only connection with India that I can remember are occasional telephone calls from an Indian woman asking to speak to ‘George McGowan, please’,” said McGowan. “My sister Kay and I would hear him say ‘Hello Auntie-ji’, and vaguely hear him use some Indian-sounding words.”

But when his father died in 2003, Alistair McGowan had to dig out his birth certificate in order to obtain the death certificate. “On the 74-year-old slip of paper, under the word ‘caste’, was the term ‘Anglo-Indian’,” the 43-year-old actor wrote in the Sunday Times. His discovery and a subsequent search for roots that takes him to Kolkata and Uttar Pradesh is to be shown on BBC television on Thursday.