Long lost cousins? D’Arcy is leaving no stone unturned.
Freshly headhunted entertainment host Ray D’Arcy has revealed that, between now and the February 2015 commencement date of his new contract at national broadcaster RTE, he’ll be spending most of the free time available to him researching his genealogy.
“I’ve got two me-months coming down the pipeline and I want to use them wisely”, the former Today FM man said. “It’s not often at this stage in a career presenting TV and radio shows that you can get yourself that sort of headspace.”
The Unforgiven
“Unless you’ve been sacked for something absolutely unforgivable, and word gets round all the stations that nobody’s to touch you with the proverbial ten foot bargepole”, he joked.
“Of course I’m not going to take myself completely out of the loop. I’ll still do the papers, and catch a few of the morning shows, but with a bit of decent internet coverage I shouldn’t have to be stuck at home all the time.”
D’Arcy went on to explain in some depth how he would be using a large part of the winter period to trace his family’s ancestry.
Once Were Warriors
Gesturing with his index finger and thumb he remarked “I was seriously this close to booking a backpacking holiday around Thailand for eight weeks. This close.”
“But when I think of the tangled fates and destinies of untold generations of warriors and adventurers who lived, loved, fought and died just so that I could be put on this earth thousands of years after their passing… it’s always been something I was curious about.”
“Now I finally have some time to act upon that curiosity.”
Previous casual attempts by him over the years to find out more about the D’Arcy family line have not yielded very much beyond what he had already long since known, he said.
All The President’s Men
“There were definitely three previous generations of D’Arcys in Kildare, but after that the picture goes kind of blurry. I asked my dad about it a couple of times. He has a childhood memory of his grandmother stoically pounding cream with a bat in a pail to make butter, that’s about it.”
“But did you know Arcy is actually a place in France? D’Arcy literally means ‘From Arcy’”, continued D’Arcy.
“Lots of other people owe their surname to the same process. Retired rugby international Mick Galwey would be one example. American secretary of state John Kerry is probably another. Michael D.Higgins, too, I imagine.”
It’s A Wonderful Life
He went on to explain how the name initially spread beyond France in the 11th century with the Norman Conquest of England. But that when Ireland also fell under partial Norman rule late in the 12th century, it wasn’t long before the traditionally Irish surname prefixes of Mac- and O’- were joined by Fitz- and D’-.
“It seems a good method to me – start at the beginning, right? Either way, apparently some of the world’s oldest cave paintings are located just outside Arcy. So I’m thinking the ancient genetic link to my creativity and gift for self-expression must somehow lie there.”
With this in mind, having already made general inquiries, D’Arcy intends to first spend Christmas with his immediate family, then travel to France until late February for research purposes.
Twins
Talks are pencilled in for early March with management at Montrose regarding how best to utilize his broadcasting talents.
“I get goose pimples imagining the scenes that could unfold walking down the main street in Arcy. Like, seeing my spitting image walking out of the boulangerie with a bag of croissants or something. Maybe he’d have some details for me about gallant Arcy knights, comely D’Arcy princesses, or even resourceful rebel assassin types from the area whose blood flows in my veins.”
Should the trip fail to draw up any useful information about the succession of sexual acts which took place in various locations over previous millenia, and which find their culmination in Ray D’Arcy, the former Den host is philosophical.
“Worst comes to worst, we can probably wring some sort of a show out of the whole thing. That way, I’d have the flights and accomodation covered.”
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