Revelation on ITV1's DNA Journey

Johnny Vegas has discovered that his great-grandparents played a key role in getting corporal punishment banned from schools.

The comic said he was ‘very proud’ to learn how they stood up to a teacher who beat their son – Vegas’s maternal great-uncle – when he misbehaved.

Vegas, real name Michael Pennington, made the discovery while filming the ITV1 show DNA Journey, which airs tonight.

On the programme, he is shown newspaper cuttings telling the story of Patrick Ryan, who was punished at the age of about ten in  St Austin’s school, St Helens – the same Catholic institution Vegas would late attend.

When Patrick and his friends became disruptive in class, he was called to the front of the room, where the teacher hit him in the back of his head and then boxed him in the ear three times.

In those days, 1938, corporal punishment was very much part of daily life in schools. But Patrick immediately experienced excruciating pain and hearing loss – losing 60 per cent of his ability to hear as a direct result.

Vegas’s great-grandparents Edmond and Mary Ryan then took the ‘pretty much unheard-of’ decision to sue the teacher for what she had done to their son.

On learning of their decision, the comic, 52, said it was a ‘David and Goliath’ battle between his labourer ancestors – who did not have the money to lose in court case – and the ‘influential, powerful’ teacher.

But they won their case, and in his ruling the judge said: ‘Patrick Ryan deserved punishment… but I am not suggesting he deserved the punishment he got. The teacher exceeded reasonable and proper punishment. It is not a proper way of punishing a child to strike it on the head or the ear.’

Vegas said: ’I’m very proud of them, taking it on. It’s very easy to say, "that's how things are" and that "it's not our place [to challenge it].’

Years later, Ryan’s story was brought up in the House of Commons during a debate on corporal punishment, and the precedent is cited in a textbook called Legal Cases For Teachers.

A historian on the show tells Vegas: ‘Little Patrick's plight caused a sensation. His case was a legal and medical but also a social victory. And it was instrumental in the banning of corporal punishment in schools, which was finally outlawed in 1986.’

The comic said: ‘It's amazing. I can get very upset at the sense of injustice on things and my dad raised me like that and to ask questions about things and to always go so "don't just take it as a given".

‘I don't think their ambitions were that lofty. I think they just went, "I don’t care what's gone before. This is wrong, we trust this young boy."

‘The ripple effect from that... you wish you could see where it is now. That makes me very proud.’

In the show, Vegas also discovers a cousin he never knew – an Elvis impersonator in his native St Helens. The comic meets Raymond Godwin and they belt out a number together. Vegas says: ‘I thought I was the only ­professional performer in the family.’

Tonight’s episode also features The Last Leg’s Alex Brooker, who  discovers social injustice in his family history, too. His four-times-great-grandfather was arrested for stealing a penny’s worth of kindling from a rector – but fought the case thanks to an early example of crowdfunding.

• DNA Journey with Johnny Vegas and Alex Brooker is on ITV1 and ITVX tonight at 9pm

Published: 14 Mar 2023