Declan Donnelly has a 'secret' cousin who did $5 billion worth of business in a year

Declan Donnelly, the 'Dec' in Ant and Dec, once discovered that he had a long-lost cousin who was pretty famous for what she did for a living over in the US.

Given how sprawling the branches of family trees can be, you and I probably have distant relatives who have ended up in all sorts of interesting situations.

Ant and Dec once decided that they'd like to see how far their branches go and where exploring them will lead, and made a show called Ant and Dec's DNA Journey.

It was sort of like Who Do You Think You Are, but on ITV and just about Ant and Dec.

For Dec, he found out that one of his family branches reached across the Atlantic Ocean to the US to someone who'd made her fame and fortune in one specific sport.

He met up with Dixie Carter, a wrestling mogul who turned out to be his distant cousin.

In her meeting with Dec, Carter said she knew of her Irish heritage, as she knew that her father had been adopted when he was three, and that later on in life, he built 'one of the most successful energy companies in the world'.

She explained to a flabbergasted Dec that it had 'done $5 billion of energy business in the last few years', and he'd already been reeling from the revelation that his mystery cousin was a wrestler.

Carter had been involved with the company Total Nonstop Action Wrestling for several years before she became a 'storyline character' in 2010, and before he met her, Dec was shown footage of her in the wrestling ring being thrown through a table.

It's not the most orthodox way of being introduced to new family members, but Ant was clearly enjoying his friend's reaction to his new cousin.

"YES.....Declan Donnelly is my cousin! It’s not a wrestling storyline. Dec’s fabulous. Ant too," she wrote on Instagram, posting a picture of the three of them together.

When Dec was first shown wrestling videos of his new cousin, he wasn't sure exactly which of the wrestlers he was going to visit, though Ant cottoned on pretty quickly that it was the wrestler described as 'the most hated woman in the history of professional wrestling'.

Dec then got to see her being thrown through a table, before she then slapped a very large man in the face.

The TV presenter said it was 'not what I expected', and afterwards Ant teased him over how 'loaded' her family was.

"It feels weird, you immediately have this kind of connection with them," Dec said as he mused on the meeting.