Harriet Wheelock / Monday 17 January 2011 Charles Byrne - The Irish Giant Last night saw the broadcast on BBC Two of a new documentary looking at the life of Charles Byrne – The Irish Giant. The documentary looked at the life of Charles Byrne, who was born in county Tyrone in 1761 and grew to be at least 7 foot 7 inches tall, some accounts claim that he was over 8 foot tall. At the age of 21 Byrne left Ireland to travel to London and make his fortune. For a while he was the talk of Georgian London with people flocking to his rooms to see 'The Irish Giant'. However, within a year Byrne's ill health, and the stresses of his fame, led to him becoming dependant on alcohol, and he died in June 1783 at the age of only 22. During the last months of his life Byrne became increasingly worried about what would happen to his body after death, as he knew that several surgeons were keen to dissect his body. To avoid this Byrne asked his friends to bury him at sea, so that his body could not be stolen from his grave. Byrne's precautions failed and his body was purchased by John Hunter for dissection, his skeleton is still on display today in the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons in London. As well as looking at Byrne's life, the programme also attempted to find a cause for his large size. DNA extracted from his teeth was used to show that he had a mutated gene which can cause tumours of the pituitary gland. The gland, located at the base of the brain, controls growth and tumours can cause abnormal growth such as thickened skin, enlarged hands and feet and overgrown organs. The programme also looked at a modern day case of acromegaly in a patient from a neighbouring part of Northern Ireland to where Charles Byrne was born. DNA showed that both share the same genetic mutation, and that there was a very high probability that this had been passed down from a common ancestor.[1] The documentary is available on BBC iPlayer, to viewers in the UK, for the next six days - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xfds8/Charles_Byrne_The_Irish_Giant/ [1] 'Irish Giant DNA Link', Communicating Science, 6 January 2011, http://www.communicatescience.eu/2011/01/irish-giant-dna-link.html Images: * Contemporary print showing Charles Byrne next to ordinary sized men and a dwarf. * Charles Byrne's skeleton in the Hunterian Museum