Kate Robbins: Paul McCartney’s Cousin and Emily Atack’s Mother

Connecting a Beatle to an Inbetweeners star and a radio legend, Kate Robbins anchors a documented showbusiness family tree. This mapped tree traces each strand using sourced records and personal accounts.

Role: Actress, singer and songwriter · Brother: Ted Robbins · Sister: Amy Robbins · Daughter: Emily Atack · Famous cousin: Paul McCartney · Headline event: Ran from 7/7 attacks

Six facts anchor the family tree, drawing on biographies, genealogical records and news archives.

Who is the UK singer Kate?

Is Kate Robbins a singer or an actress?

• Actress: Kate Robbins has built a career in British TV comedy and entertainment, including a role on the BBC soap EastEnders.
• Singer and songwriter: Her professional credits span music as well as voice work and on-screen performance.

An editorial profile on TV Insider describes her as an actress, singer and songwriter, confirming the dual career. Wikipedia lists her credits alongside her recording work.

What has Kate Robbins appeared in?

• Television: EastEnders, The Peter Serafinowicz Show, Get Well Soon
• Music and voice: Songwriting credits and voice acting roles

The mix of TV, music and voice work means her name appears in very different contexts — episode guides, music databases and family profiles. The pattern: her family connections are better documented than her individual credits. The implication: people looking for her often find one strand of her career without seeing the whole.

How is Paul McCartney related to Kate Robbins?

Who is Paul McCartney’s cousin?

The genealogical evidence places the relationship precisely.

Family historians working with Who Do You Think You Are? traced the connection through Betty Danher. Betty’s mother, Annie McCartney, was a sibling of Jim McCartney, Paul McCartney’s father. That makes Betty Danher Jim’s niece, and her daughter Kate Robbins Paul’s first cousin once removed.

What do interviews say?

Emily Atack told the Daily Mirror that McCartney was close to her grandparents and helped them out.

“People ask if he’s my uncle. I’m like, technically he’s my first cousin twice removed, but it’s easier to say uncle.”

— Emily Atack, via Daily Mirror

“He [Paul McCartney] was close to my grandma and grandpa, Betty and Mike Robbins, and used to help them out.”

— Emily Atack, via Daily Mirror

The genealogical data resolves the common confusion, confirming a specific generation gap.

Who did Kate Robbins play in EastEnders?

What was Kate Robbins’s EastEnders role?

• Kate Robbins is listed among the cast of the long-running BBC soap.
• The specific character name, episode numbers and broadcast dates are not widely aggregated in accessible top-tier episode guides.

The gap is notable. Wikipedia includes EastEnders among her credits, but the absence of character detail means the role remains a known unknown in her biography. The pattern: her family connections are better documented than her individual credits.

Who is Kate Robbins’s famous daughter?

Who is Emily Atack?

• Emily Atack is an actress, known for playing the posh girl in The Inbetweeners alongside Simon Bird.
• She is the daughter of Kate Robbins and musician Keith Atack. The family records list three children: Emily, Martha, and George.
• Emily Atack was born on 18 December 1989 in Luton, Bedfordshire (Wikipedia entry).

Who is Kate Robbins’s partner?

• Kate Robbins was married to Keith Atack, a musician who played with the band Child (BBC 5 Live interview).
• They divorced after roughly two decades of marriage — published accounts differ on whether the year was 2007 or 2008 (Hello! magazine profile).
• Current partner status is not supplied in available public records.

Emily Atack has recalled running from the 7 July 2005 London bombings with her mother.

Emily Atack is the clearest public continuation of the Robbins family’s performance streak.

How many Robbins sisters are there?

Is Amy Robbins Kate’s sister?

The sibling set most commonly covered in sources includes these names.

Who is Kate Robbins’s brother?

• Ted Robbins is the established name. He is a BBC radio presenter and actor best known for playing a security guard in Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights.
• Kate Robbins spoke to BBC 5 Live about Ted’s recovery after a cardiac arrest.
• Their father, David Michael “Mike” Robbins, worked as a Redcoat entertainer at Butlin’s holiday camps (The Genealogist report).

The catch: locating the precise count of all Robbins siblings requires a level of genealogical digging that most entertainment bios skip. The commonly named trio is Kate, Ted and Amy.

Timeline

Key dates in the Robbins family story.

The Robbins–McCartney connection places the family in the same post-war Liverpool scene as George Harrison’s final days — a tight-knit musical ecosystem where family and friendship ran together.

What’s confirmed, what’s unclear

In their own words

“People ask if he’s my uncle. I’m like, technically he’s my first cousin twice removed, but it’s easier to say uncle.”

— Emily Atack, via Daily Mirror

“He [Paul McCartney] was close to my grandma and grandpa, Betty and Mike Robbins, and used to help them out.”

— Emily Atack, via Daily Mirror

Kate Robbins spoke to BBC 5 Live about her brother Ted’s collapse on stage and his subsequent recovery.

For anyone cataloguing British entertainment families, Kate Robbins is a central hinge. The documented tree connects a Beatle, a comedy writer and a rising star, with a London bombings footnote that grounds it all in lived history. The missing EastEnders character detail and current relationship status are the only gaps in an otherwise unusually well-documented family story. For the fan of British television who has pieced these connections together across Wikipedia, podcasts and news clips, the case for a single, cohesive documentary feature is clear: the full Robbins story hasn’t been told in one place yet.

Frequently asked questions