Kev Kennedy's Blog

What's in a name?

On the forums people have been asking me if I'm related to any famous Kennedys. For example, Star in a Jar asked if I was the long lost brother of Neighbours legend Karl Kennedy. To which the answer is 'No', mainly because he's a FICTIONAL CHARACTER! 

Other posters asked if I was related to Alan, Charles or John F Kennedy, or a weetabix. Now my dad always reckoned he was thrid cousins to Liverpool legend Alan Kennedy, but I don't know if that's true at all. My great-granddad's two brothers emigrated to America at the end of the nineteenth century, but I don't think they became the tragic transatlantic Kennedy clan. And there's no family links to Charles.

But every family has a few black sheep and a few famous sons. My ambition to become a writer was fuelled by my great auntie Harriet McDougall Kennedy, who wrote children's books in the 1920s and managed to combine both black sheep status and fame, or at least notoriety. Unfortunately due to the subject matter and changing cultural tastes, those books are long out of print, given their undoubtedly racist overtones. All in all she wrote seven books, five of them about a brother and sister called Sally and James who's father is a British ambassador. I don't have any copies of her books, but it's perhaps obvious why 'Sally and James civilise the Hottentots' and 'Sally and James' adventures on Coon Island' are no longer read to children!

And, while I may look like a weetabix, I can assure you I'm not. Although I was a member of the Weetabix Gang as a child - weird, hey?

Created on Wed 12th December 2007 10:53