If you shake your family tree you never know what you will find. John Major thinks his grandmother was almost certainly Irish. Nothing remarkable in that, but he says her name was "Sarah Mara or Sarah O'Mara".
We know someone else in modern politics called Mara, don't we? Could Major be related to the man who introduced the concept of Uno Duce, Una Voce to the Irish vocabulary, Charles Haughey's faithful spokesman and advisor, P.J. Mara?
Gay Byrne was interviewing John Major at the National Concert Hall in Dublin at the weekend. It's part of a series called Face To Face, featuring different public figures. The political "anoraks" and cognoscenti paid from €40 to €80 to attend.
Gaybo didn't explore the possibility that "P.J." might have a blood relationship with a British prime minister as well as a political relationship with an Irish one. But he did ask the question that was on everybody's mind.
Even his critics would concede that Mr Major is polite and civil, almost to a fault. His background is in banking and he is just the type of person who could refuse you an overdraft while making you feel he had done you the biggest favour of your life.
But as the ex-PM burbled on in his usual amiable fashion, the unspoken tension in the audience grew and grew. Would Gay ask him about his much-publicised extra-marital relationship with a colleague, or would he "Currie" favour, so to speak, by refraining from any mention of it?
The Old Master didn't let us down. Major had just finished reminiscing about life in the House of Commons when Gaybo paused and then simply said: "Edwina!" Quick as a flash came the reply: "I have said what I had to say about that before, and I don't intend to say any more than that."
Major even got a round of applause. Gaybo said: "Do you get away with this?" Major hit back: "I just have." Muttering about brass necks, Gay moved on.
We never quite got to understand how Major made the transition from near-Dickensian squalor, as the son of a retired trapeze artist and failed businessman, to high office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. But he kept us regaled with well-polished anecdotes.
He clearly had a soft spot for Boris Yeltsin. One time, he asked the Russian leader to tell him "in one word" how things were in Russia. Yeltsin replied: "Good!" Feeling he might need more information, Major asked him to summarise the situation in two words this time and Yeltsin answered: "Not good!" On another occasion, at a meeting in the Kremlin, Yeltsin asked Major if he would like a "coffee" but when the mugs were brought to the table they were filled with neat vodka.
George Bush snr was "one of the loveliest men in the world", but there were a few little digs as well as some compliments for Bill Clinton. When the pair of them were about to address an audience, Major would ask himself, "Are they going to like what I'm about to say?" But Clinton would be wondering: "What can I say that they are going to like?"
Or so Major says. There was a certain amount of false modesty ("I have a fairly average brain") as well as some heavy-duty name-dropping. The squarest man in the world watched cricket with Mick Jagger: what did they talk about? He seems to have mixed feelings about the woman he refers to as "Margaret" and the rest of us know as Maggie.
But there was unadulterated praise for Albert Reynolds, who was present in the audience with his wife, Kathleen. "Albert's a very special person," Major said. Despite the fact that they had "some of the most spectacular rows I have ever had with anyone", Major predicted they would still be best buddies when they were "zipping around on Zimmer frames".