Joe Swash's latest TV show, Who Do You Think You Are?, is his most revealing yet.07:51, 02 Jun 2026Actor and presenter Joe Swash is no stranger to letting cameras film his private moments, whether it’s in the jungle for I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! or at the Pickle Cottage home he shares with his other half Stacey Solomon for the reality series Stacey & Joe .‌But his latest TV appearance, in an episode of the documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? , is Joe’s most revealing yet, as he delves into his own history and discovers stories about his late father’s side of the family that bring the former EastEnders star to tears.‌At 44, Joe is already five years older than his dad Ricky was when he died at the age of 39. Joe was just 12 when he lost his father, and remembers what life was like in his family’s Islington home following his death. “For a long time it was a house full of sadness and grief – a lot of the time I was trying to get through that period,” he says.‌Joe was already working as a child actor by that time, having made his first TV appearance in an Andrex commercial when he was seven years old, which he followed with roles in the sitcom You Rang, M’Lord? and dramas Casualty , The Bill and London’s Burning .Sadly, Ricky was not around to see his son star as Mickey Miller in EastEnders in 2003, or win both I’m A Celebrity… in 2008 and Dancing On Ice in 2020.‌And Joe never had the chance to introduce Ricky to Stacey or their family – Harry, 19 this month, whose mother is Joe’s former girlfriend Emma Sophocleous; Stacey’s sons Zachary, 18, and Leighton, 14, who he is stepfather to; and the three children he shares with Stacey — Rex, who has just turned seven, Rose, four, and three-year-old Belle.On Father’s Day two years ago, Stacey shared an Instagram post about how sad it was that she had never known Joe’s father. “I never got to meet your dad. But he must have been the best dad in the world to have created you,” she wrote. “Honestly Joe, you do your dad proud every single minute of the day. You’re the most incredible father. We are the luckiest.”While he can never change the past, looking into his father’s family history for Who Do You Think You Are? has led Joe to finally feel a connection to his dad that has been missing for many years.‌“It did make me feel closer to him. It was something I knew my dad would have loved to have known about, and a journey he’d have loved to have gone on himself,” he says.‌“It was nice to sort of reconnect a little bit. I was so relieved learning about his side of the family as well — my worst nightmare would have been to hear, ‘And your great-great grandad and your great-great-great grandad all worked at the same thing.’ But my family was completely different, I was so relieved that my family had a story.”And it is quite a story, too. Joe knew that Ricky was part English and part Italian, and he jokes in the show that “I might not look Italian, but inside I feel Italian.”But nothing could have prepared Joe for a search into his family’s history that takes him from North London’s Islington and Clerkenwell — which was known as Little Italy in the 19th century after thousands of Italians settled there — to a remote village in the mountains outside Naples. Along the way, he even discovers there is a family connection to the British suffragette movement.‌It turns out that Joe’s family name on his dad’s side was originally Raimo, and Joe’s great-great grandfather was Giuseppe Raimo, who left his homeland of Italy, and the life of a peasant farmer, to settle in London where he worked as a street piano player, and where records show he attended meetings organised by famous suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst.“I’ve always felt a connection to my Italian side, it’s in my DNA. So it was lovely to find out that where I grew up — where my mum still lives, and my sister still lives, in Islington — is literally a stone’s throw away from where my Italian relatives first settled in London,” Joe says.‌“I had so much pride when I found out about Giuseppe. The journey he went on, the morals and the things he stood up for, the people he rubbed shoulders with, and the way he got out and worked through poverty to make himself and make his family’s life better, just shows real tenacity.”Learning about Giuseppe and other members of the Raimo family meant that Joe could also finally honour his own dad. “It was really nice to find out everything, for my dad. If he was watching, he would have loved the journey I went on, and he would have loved to know everything about our history, too.“I think what I’ll carry with me from this experience is the importance of where you come from and knowing who you are,” Joe adds. “As well as the things I found out about my relatives, especially Giuseppe. Traits and things from them that I hope I have as well, or that I’d like to introduce into my life. It just made me feel a lot more attached to my heritage, which I’ve never really felt attached to. After this journey, I feel like I’m part of something.”‌Joe also visited the mountain village of Senerchia, 75 miles from Naples, where the Raimo family originated from and discovered there is still a bar there bearing the family name.The village was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1980, and new buildings have been built alongside the ruins of the streets where Joe’s ancestors would have lived hundreds of years ago. The actor was visibly moved when he retraced the steps of the Raimos who had once lived there.“It’s quite a bizarre feeling to go to the place where part of me is from,” he says. “I really want to go back to Senerchia with my kids and with Stacey, back to the town where my relatives were from. It’s just the most amazing place.”Article continues below“I think I’ll go back with my lot to show them, I honestly think they’re going to love it there. And I’ll take them to Bar Raimo!”Who Do You Think You Are? is released at 9pm on BBC One on June 9.