While researching our relationship to Crown Princess Mary of Denmark I encountered a distant cousin Stuart Capaldi and naturally asked him he if was related to the then Dr Who, Peter Capaldi. He believed that he was but was unaware exactly how he was related so we looked into the relationship and discovered they were related several times over.

Peter Capaldi

Peter Dougan Capaldi (born 14 April 1958) is a Scottish actor, director, singer and writer. He portrayed the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who (2013–2017) and Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It (2005–2012), for which he has received four British Academy Television Award nominations, winning Best Male Comedy Performance in 2010. When he reprised the role of Tucker in the feature film In the Loop, Capaldi was honoured with several film critic award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.

Capaldi won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Short Film for his 1993 short film Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life. He went on to write and direct the drama film Strictly Sinatra and directed two series of the sitcom Getting On.

Capaldi was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to Nancy (née Soutar) and Gerald John Capaldi. His paternal grandfather was Italian, while the rest of his ancestry is Scottish and Irish. His parents ran an ice cream business in the Springburn district, where they were neighbours and acquaintances of the family of Armando Iannucci, creator of The Thick of It, although the two men did not know each other as children. He was educated at St Teresa’s Primary School in Possilpark, St Matthew’s Primary School in Bishopbriggs, and St Ninian’s High School, Kirkintilloch, before attending the Glasgow School of Art.

Capaldi displayed an early talent for performance by putting on a puppet show in primary school. While at high school, he was a member of the Antonine Players, who performed at the Fort Theatre in Bishopbriggs. As an art student, he was the lead singer and guitarist in a punk rock band called The Dreamboys, whose drummer was future comedian Craig Ferguson. The pair also performed a cabaret act together as Bing & Dean Hitler and wrote an alternative pantomime of Sleeping Beauty. Capaldi went on to perform musical comedy cabaret in the guises of “bank clerk about town” Gavin Meekie and as one half of husband-and-wife TV evangelists Tom & Sammy Jo.

Lewis Capaldi

Lewis Marc Capaldi (born 7 October 1996) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician. He was nominated for the Critics’ Choice Award at the 2019 Brit Awards. In March 2019, his single “Someone You Loved” topped the UK Singles Chart where it remained for seven weeks, and in November 2019, reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100, it was nominated at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and won the 2020 Brit Award for Song of the Year. Capaldi also won the 2020 Brit Award for Best New Artist.

On 17 May 2019, he released his debut album, Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent, which remained at the top of the UK Albums Chart for six weeks. It later went on to become the best selling album of 2019 and 2020 in the UK, and “Someone You Loved” was the best selling single of 2019 in the UK. In May 2020, it was announced that Capaldi’s song “Someone You Loved” had become the longest-running top 10 UK single of all time by a British artist.

How are Peter and Lewis Capaldi related?

More recently when Peter Capaldi featured in singer Lewis Capaldi’s video, there was speculation as to how they were related, Metro stated that “Lewis Capaldi is the second cousin once removed to actor Peter Capaldi – Peter is Lewis’ dad’s second cousin.“

However, looking at the Capaldi tree that we had previously researched, this appeared to be incorrect with Peter and Lewis Capaldi actually being first cousins twice removed.