Rupert Everett is 'stunned' to discover his family's greatest secret in Africa

A homosexual comic once noted that the great thing about being black is that you don't have to tell your parents. Rupert Everett, the actor, is, however, about to inform his mother, Sara, that he has Nigerian ancestry.

The existence of Jacob Everett, the actor's 84-year-old uncle, who lives outside the Nigerian capital, Lagos, was uncovered by researchers on the television programme Who Do You Think You Are …?


"Rupert is stunned," whispers my mole on the BBC show. "The plan is to get them together soon. Jacob is a prosperous family man who was the product of what I can only describe as an alternative family that Rupert's father's father established."

Everett, who stars in the new comedy thriller Wild Target, is busy rehearsing as Henry Higgins for the Chichester Festival Theatre's production of Pygmalion and his publicist said he did not want to talk about his new relation.

When I got the 51-year-old actor on the telephone, he said, with exasperation: "Yes, it's true, I am gay, I am black and I am royal. The only box I haven't ticked is Jewish, but I am working on that one."

Royal? "Wait and see," he said, teasingly, before putting the telephone down.

Everett's father, Major Tony Everett, a veteran of the Burma Campaign, died last year, aged 87. Through the actor's maternal grandparents, Opre Vyvyan and Vice-Adml Sir Hector MacLean, he is a descendant of the baronets Vyvyan of Trelowarren and the German barons Freiherren von Schmiedern.

He is also a great-nephew of Donald Maclean, the Soviet double agent, and a great-grandson of the Liberal politician Sir Donald Maclean, who was leader of the Opposition in 1918 to 1920.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/7830858/Rupert-Everett-is-stunned-to-discover-his-familys-greatest-secret-in-Africa.html

Nigerian capital Lagos? huh?