By George, you were so shameless.

Byline: PaddyShennan

INOW see Kim Cattrall in a very different light (Who Do You Think You Are? BBC1, Wednesday). As a confirmed Sex And The City hater, it was a revelation to see the Liverpool-born actress in something so engrossing. And real.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a happy story. It wasn't even a sad story with the hint of a happy ending. It was, despite the inspiring moral strength shown by Cattrall, her mother and two aunties, just very sad.

There may be two sides to every story, but it was probably just as well that the cause of all this sadness - Cattrall's "son of a bitch/absolute rogue/selfish b*****d" of a grandfather, George Baugh - is no longer with us.

He wouldn't have stood a chance against Kim, her Vancouver-based mum Shane and Shane's Liverpool-based sisters, Marjorie and Dorothy. And it's difficult to think of any defence he could have put up after abandoning his wife, Marian, and three daughters more than 70 years ago ws hen he walked out of the family home in Toxteth, never to return.

Who Do You Think You Are? is, inevitably, only as strong as its subject material - and Kim Cattrall's story was a fascinating one from start to finish: "I don't anticipate happiness from this," she told us at the beginning. "I think it's going to end in tears."

She was spot on.

Unravelling why Baugh had left his young family in 1938 and then finding out what he did next brought no comfort but several shocks.

Just a year after he vanished, he bigamously remarried, in Durham, before having four more children with his second wife, Isabella (who believed she was his first wife).

To rub salt into very old wounds, happy, smiley holiday photographs were produced which showed that George's second family had a much better time of it then the one he shamefully left behind.

After about 20 years, he decided to uproot his second family and take them - his wife reluctantly - to Australia.

Baugh died in 1974 and Isabella in 1990, while the three surviving children from their marriage remain in Australia (since filming ended, Shane, Marjorie and Dorothy have met their half-siblings Down Under).

"It seemed like he was selfish to the very end," concluded Cattrall.

So, no happy ending - but possibly the best programme this series has produced.

CAPTION(S):

UNHAPPY JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY: Kim Cattrall on the trail of her "son of a bitch" grandfather