Comic Bea's great grandad was a freedom fighter

COMEDIAN Aisling Bea has discovered a brutal killing - and a brave freedom fighter - in her family’s past in the new season of hit ancestry show Who Do You Think You Are?

- BY LYNNE KELLEHER

This Way Up star Bea learns that one of her male ancestors was among the volunteers prepared to fight in the Easter Rising, while another male relative was violently attacked on his farm a few years before the famine, later dying from his injuries.

Sitting in the West Kerry Museum in Ballyferriter, she learns her schoolteacher great-grandfather, Padraig O Briain, played a key role in the Irish Volunteers by keeping the Ballyferriter branch trained ahead of the 1916 Rising.

"He has a very pivotal role to play, not just in keeping the company together, communicating with headquarters, organising military drills and training - and at the same time he’s juggling his teaching role,” says historian Dr Daithí O Corrain.

Bafta-winning actress Bea grew up in Kildare with her mum, Helen, and sister, Sinead, after her dad, Brian, passed away when she was three.