Lambeth Palace has issued a strongly worded complaint to the BBC following the impact of Who Do You Think You Are on All Souls Day.
"The Archbishop of Canterbury is a bit put out by the number of Dearly Departed being added to the lists for All Souls by overkeen genealogists." the statement reads. "We don't mind a few relatives, and perhaps the odd friend or two, but going back more than one generation is really not on, unless you happen to be from the Royal Family."
"These names all have to be read out on All Souls' Day, and some vicars are spending hours trawling through them all. Something really needs to be done to curb the spread of gratuitous genealogical research in our country before it is too late, and we end up with one massive great big family tree, with 60 million names on it."
"We used to have perhaps a hundred names to read out each year" commented Rev'd Steve Hardwicke, Rector of St Hedwig the Less, Doncaster. "This year our organist alone has turned up with 2,563 names, and says that if she manages to find a link through the Exeter archive, next year she hopes to be back to Domesday. I made the mistake on Sunday of saying in the sermon that I don't mind how many names there are, because I will read them all, but our Mother's Union then presented me with a list of 83,678 names between them."
The BBC declined to comment.