Channel 4 chiefs have commissioned a new show aimed at putting young adults back in touch with politics.
The show, Big Brother, which went on air last week, places as many dysfunctional people as they can find in a domestic environment. The programme makers have teamed up with the British National Party, one of the countries' most outspoken political groups, who have promised to put the winners forward as MPs at the next General election.
The show has already been hailed as a success by chiefs, after contestant Emily Parr was wheeled away in the early hours of this morning after allegedly making offensive and racist remarks towards another housemate.
A BNP spokesman said, "We are encouraged by the fact that, even at this early stage of the competition, potential political candidates are emerging. Miss Parr has demonstrated a practical understanding of our ideology, and we would hope she accepts our offer to make her a prospective MP."
The spokesman continued, "Placing hand-picked dysfunctional contestants into an unnatural situation clearly brings out the unsavoury aspects of human behaviour we as a Party are looking for. We motion that all new affordable and social housing built by the government is made in the same way as the Big Brother house. This should increase racial, sexual and nationalist hostility, and decrease moral and social understanding, leading to more votes for the BNP."
Some sections of the media and public have expressed concerns that Big Brother may not be a fair reflection of UK society. However, a spokesman for Channel 4 vehemently defended the show.
"If we put normal people into the Big Brother house, and didn't subject them to psychological torture, then UK society would be perceived as tolerant and nice. This makes for dull viewing, which means less money for us."
Nevertheless, previous contestants are now distancing themselves from the show. Jade Goody, winner of the pilot show Celebrity Big Brother commented, "I'm not racist, I'm just an attention grabbing whore. I thought an MPs salary was bigger than what I thought it was. Now I know better, I'm distancing myself from politics, and going into the more lucrative field of selling my kidney live on five."
The Spoof
Showing posts with label Big Brother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Brother. Show all posts
June 07, 2007
New race row hits Big Brother (yawn)
Big Brother contestant Emily Parr was removed from the show early this morning after calling fellow housemate Charley Uchea a "nigger".
Parr was told to leave the Big Brother house at around 3.30am today after using the racially offensive word. The incident happened after she was dancing with Uchea and Nicky Maxwell in the living room at approximately 8.30pm last night. The 19-year-old student was heard to say "Are you pushing it out, you nigger?" to Uchea.
In the early hours of this morning, Parr was called to the diary room and producers told her to leave the house immediately.
Uchea and Maxwell were shocked at the language, though Parr insisted it had been a joke.
Angela Jain, who heads the Big Brother commissioning team at Channel 4, said: "In the wake of Celebrity Big Brother, we must consider the potential offence to viewers regardless of Emily's intentions and her housemates' response. The word 'nigger' is clearly racially offensive and there was no justification for its use. We have removed Emily from the house to once again make it clear to all housemates and the viewers at home that such behaviour won't be tolerated."
Parr was one of the two housemates nominated for eviction on Friday.
The incident was not screened as part of the "as live" streaming on E4 but it will be shown tonight on Channel 4 in the Big Brother highlights show at 10pm.
In the wake of the race row in Celebrity Big Brother, show producer Brighter Pictures and Channel 4 moved quickly to act on Parr's comments last night. The comments were immediately reported to senior production staff at Brighter Pictures, the Endemol UK subsidiary that produces the show. Endemol consulted with senior executives at Channel 4 and the decision was taken to remove Parr from the house on the grounds that she "had broken the rules governing contestant behaviour".
Rules given to all contestants state:
"Big Brother will intervene and take appropriate action if housemates behave in a way that Big Brother considers is unacceptable.
"Unacceptable behaviour includes: behaving in a way that could cause serious offence to either their fellow housemates or members of the viewing public including serious offence based on the grounds of race.
"Housemates who act in a way that is seriously unacceptable will be evicted."
At the start of Big Brother 8, Channel 4 and Brighter Pictures put in place new measures to ensure any potentially offensive material was reported.
This followed the landmark ruling by regulator Ofcom last month that forced Channel 4 to make three on-screen apologies over failings in procedure during Celebrity Big Brother in January.
An Endemol spokesman said today: "This vindicates the procedures we have got in place and we have acted accordingly."
Channel 4 is discussing whether there will an eviction show tomorrow night and whether to frame tonight's show with a discussion about Parr's comments.
Media Guardian
Parr was told to leave the Big Brother house at around 3.30am today after using the racially offensive word. The incident happened after she was dancing with Uchea and Nicky Maxwell in the living room at approximately 8.30pm last night. The 19-year-old student was heard to say "Are you pushing it out, you nigger?" to Uchea.
In the early hours of this morning, Parr was called to the diary room and producers told her to leave the house immediately.
Uchea and Maxwell were shocked at the language, though Parr insisted it had been a joke.
Angela Jain, who heads the Big Brother commissioning team at Channel 4, said: "In the wake of Celebrity Big Brother, we must consider the potential offence to viewers regardless of Emily's intentions and her housemates' response. The word 'nigger' is clearly racially offensive and there was no justification for its use. We have removed Emily from the house to once again make it clear to all housemates and the viewers at home that such behaviour won't be tolerated."
Parr was one of the two housemates nominated for eviction on Friday.
The incident was not screened as part of the "as live" streaming on E4 but it will be shown tonight on Channel 4 in the Big Brother highlights show at 10pm.
In the wake of the race row in Celebrity Big Brother, show producer Brighter Pictures and Channel 4 moved quickly to act on Parr's comments last night. The comments were immediately reported to senior production staff at Brighter Pictures, the Endemol UK subsidiary that produces the show. Endemol consulted with senior executives at Channel 4 and the decision was taken to remove Parr from the house on the grounds that she "had broken the rules governing contestant behaviour".
Rules given to all contestants state:
"Big Brother will intervene and take appropriate action if housemates behave in a way that Big Brother considers is unacceptable.
"Unacceptable behaviour includes: behaving in a way that could cause serious offence to either their fellow housemates or members of the viewing public including serious offence based on the grounds of race.
"Housemates who act in a way that is seriously unacceptable will be evicted."
At the start of Big Brother 8, Channel 4 and Brighter Pictures put in place new measures to ensure any potentially offensive material was reported.
This followed the landmark ruling by regulator Ofcom last month that forced Channel 4 to make three on-screen apologies over failings in procedure during Celebrity Big Brother in January.
An Endemol spokesman said today: "This vindicates the procedures we have got in place and we have acted accordingly."
Channel 4 is discussing whether there will an eviction show tomorrow night and whether to frame tonight's show with a discussion about Parr's comments.
Media Guardian
Labels:
Big Brother,
Channel Four,
Endemol,
racist,
what a pile of crap
May 27, 2007
Racism lite masks reality on the streets
Don't let the outrage over the Channel 4 show lull you into believing it was an aberration. Discrimination is still horribly endemic in our society.
Stand by for the new and sanitised Big Brother. From Wednesday, contestants may be discussing Cartesian dualism while taking up incentivised recycling. Obviously, future housemates won't include anyone likely to stir up racial controversy, which rules out mouthy sub-celebrities and Margaret Hodge.
I'll come back to the industry minister, who argued in these pages last week for British families to be given housing priority over immigrants. Let's start, though, with the Channel 4 furore and the unprecedented rebuke issued, with Lord Chamberlain solemnity, by the media watchdog, Ofcom. Channel 4's future is said to be in the balance after code breaches over the alleged racist bullying of the Bollywood actor, Shilpa Shetty.
In general, moral outrage about the arts (I use the word loosely) grows to look absurd. The attack on George Eliot's Adam Bede as 'the vile outpourings of a lewd woman's mind' now seems as preposterous as East Germany's 1954 ban on Mickey Mouse for being an anti-Red rebel. The case against Big Brother seems stronger, not least because of the 'cover-up' of unbroadcast footage in which some housemates attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to think up words that rhymed with 'Paki'.
This is disgusting stuff, but it is also just worth remembering the venom, bullying and excess that took place outside the Big Brother house. Jade Goody was reviled by the media as an evil 'face of hate', while her co-conspirators were 'bitches on heat'. Gordon Brown, in India, endorsed Shilpa, 50 MPs signed an early-day motion, and the Sun hailed Jade's eviction as 'the most important [ballot] since the general election'.
The mood is just as febrile now. Channel 4 executives have been reviled, with some justification, for their slippery and mendacious ways. The failure to tell an Australian Big Brother contestant that her father had died has reinforced Stephen Fry's view that all reality television is 'squalid and dreadful'.
There is something unsettling about all this outrage. The Ofcom report, measured as it is, hints at what one TV executive calls 'regulation by public relations'. More importantly, it soothes people into believing that no right-thinking Briton will tolerate a whiff of racism. The 44,500 viewers who objected to Channel 4 can be assured that such a horror will never be repeated.
Should these complainants be at a loose end, however, there are a few outstanding nationality-related issues, none of which rated much mention in the week Celebrity Big Brother got its come-uppance. In Norwich, seven young men walked laughing from court after receiving suspended jail sentences for 'a ferocious and unprovoked' attack, in which they kicked, punched and spat on two Polish workers.
Newspaper reports of 'floods' of east European migrants supposedly leeching off state hand-outs masked the truth...that migration from the new EU countries, which is vital to the economy, seems to have passed its peak, and only 8,000 Romanian and Bulgarian job-seekers arrived in the first quarter this year, against predictions of a 300,000 influx in 20 months.
In the third, and saddest, example, a report by the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association charted the plight of unaccompanied refugee children, many of them Afghans, who arrive in Britain alone and traumatised after unthinkable journeys. Thousands of boys as young as 13 are being reassigned as adults by the immigration service, and so disqualified from the education and foster care they need.
Discrimination is not cooked up in the Big Brother kitchen. It seeps down from the top, not in rivers of blood but in such meandering streams of cause and effect that people barely notice how shamingly endemic it has become. A quarter of white children live in poverty, compared with 74 per cent of Bangladeshis, 60 per cent of Pakistanis and 56 per cent of black Africans. Stephen Byers, a former cabinet minister, tells our political editor today that, in parts of the country, we are 'sleepwalking towards the segregation of schools on racial grounds'.
This shadowy apartheid means that a child's future is dictated by race, not by ability. Employers overlook or underpay non-whites, and black people are five times as likely as white ones to be stopped and searched. On Prison Reform Trust figures for 2002, more African Caribbean entrants went to jail (11,500) than to university (8,000). Far from highlighting these imbalances, the Big Brother row has diverted attention from real scandals.
Tony Blair, who has had difficulty untangling reality from illusion ever since he urged that Deirdre Barlow of Coronation Street be freed from jail, said at the height of the Big Brother furore that any perception that Britain tolerated racism had to be 'regretted and countered'. So how unfortunate that, just before Ofcom underlined that message, Blair's industry minister used what education secretary Alan Johnson later called 'the language of the BNP'.
The Jade Goody of the government front benches appeared to be suggesting that newly arrived migrants living in damp squalor with an asthmatic child should be leapfrogged by the less needy indigenous family. This is a loathsome argument, especially since migrants currently get only a tiny percentage of social housing.
I am glad, though, that Mrs Hodge spoke out. Although several of her colleagues professed horror, she is unique only in venturing into nationality. Other ministers have backed constituents who feel their loyalty to the sitting MP is being tested by neighbours with anti-social ways and hellish children. The most illiberal policies of Blair's tenure have been built on intolerance of one sort or another.
It is easy to imagine Jade, Jo and Danielle as wavering Hodge supporters, though there is no evidence that any of them would ever vote BNP. However vile their conduct, this was television, not the Old Kent Road. Where reality shows serve any purpose, it is surely to spark neuralgia in a complacent society.
If Big Brother got out of hand, then the reaction has matched it. Besides, a sort of weird justice has been done. Jade is no longer 'the 25th most inferlential [sic] person in the world'. Shilpa has been to Parliament and met the Queen. It would be more than a pity if Channel 4 were now to be privatised by Gordon Brown and Big Brother made into a talking shop for housemates with Lady Bracknell manners, a tofu habit and a social conscience.
Such a result would demonstrate the very intolerance that the programme's critics deplore. It would also smash one small mirror on a country much more divided than it ever notices. Evidence of racism and dishonesty can never be justified or ignored. Nonetheless, the suspicion remains that the Big Brother circus has become what Jade would call an 'escape goat' for much more dangerous failings.
Guardian
Stand by for the new and sanitised Big Brother. From Wednesday, contestants may be discussing Cartesian dualism while taking up incentivised recycling. Obviously, future housemates won't include anyone likely to stir up racial controversy, which rules out mouthy sub-celebrities and Margaret Hodge.
I'll come back to the industry minister, who argued in these pages last week for British families to be given housing priority over immigrants. Let's start, though, with the Channel 4 furore and the unprecedented rebuke issued, with Lord Chamberlain solemnity, by the media watchdog, Ofcom. Channel 4's future is said to be in the balance after code breaches over the alleged racist bullying of the Bollywood actor, Shilpa Shetty.
In general, moral outrage about the arts (I use the word loosely) grows to look absurd. The attack on George Eliot's Adam Bede as 'the vile outpourings of a lewd woman's mind' now seems as preposterous as East Germany's 1954 ban on Mickey Mouse for being an anti-Red rebel. The case against Big Brother seems stronger, not least because of the 'cover-up' of unbroadcast footage in which some housemates attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to think up words that rhymed with 'Paki'.
This is disgusting stuff, but it is also just worth remembering the venom, bullying and excess that took place outside the Big Brother house. Jade Goody was reviled by the media as an evil 'face of hate', while her co-conspirators were 'bitches on heat'. Gordon Brown, in India, endorsed Shilpa, 50 MPs signed an early-day motion, and the Sun hailed Jade's eviction as 'the most important [ballot] since the general election'.
The mood is just as febrile now. Channel 4 executives have been reviled, with some justification, for their slippery and mendacious ways. The failure to tell an Australian Big Brother contestant that her father had died has reinforced Stephen Fry's view that all reality television is 'squalid and dreadful'.
There is something unsettling about all this outrage. The Ofcom report, measured as it is, hints at what one TV executive calls 'regulation by public relations'. More importantly, it soothes people into believing that no right-thinking Briton will tolerate a whiff of racism. The 44,500 viewers who objected to Channel 4 can be assured that such a horror will never be repeated.
Should these complainants be at a loose end, however, there are a few outstanding nationality-related issues, none of which rated much mention in the week Celebrity Big Brother got its come-uppance. In Norwich, seven young men walked laughing from court after receiving suspended jail sentences for 'a ferocious and unprovoked' attack, in which they kicked, punched and spat on two Polish workers.
Newspaper reports of 'floods' of east European migrants supposedly leeching off state hand-outs masked the truth...that migration from the new EU countries, which is vital to the economy, seems to have passed its peak, and only 8,000 Romanian and Bulgarian job-seekers arrived in the first quarter this year, against predictions of a 300,000 influx in 20 months.
In the third, and saddest, example, a report by the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association charted the plight of unaccompanied refugee children, many of them Afghans, who arrive in Britain alone and traumatised after unthinkable journeys. Thousands of boys as young as 13 are being reassigned as adults by the immigration service, and so disqualified from the education and foster care they need.
Discrimination is not cooked up in the Big Brother kitchen. It seeps down from the top, not in rivers of blood but in such meandering streams of cause and effect that people barely notice how shamingly endemic it has become. A quarter of white children live in poverty, compared with 74 per cent of Bangladeshis, 60 per cent of Pakistanis and 56 per cent of black Africans. Stephen Byers, a former cabinet minister, tells our political editor today that, in parts of the country, we are 'sleepwalking towards the segregation of schools on racial grounds'.
This shadowy apartheid means that a child's future is dictated by race, not by ability. Employers overlook or underpay non-whites, and black people are five times as likely as white ones to be stopped and searched. On Prison Reform Trust figures for 2002, more African Caribbean entrants went to jail (11,500) than to university (8,000). Far from highlighting these imbalances, the Big Brother row has diverted attention from real scandals.
Tony Blair, who has had difficulty untangling reality from illusion ever since he urged that Deirdre Barlow of Coronation Street be freed from jail, said at the height of the Big Brother furore that any perception that Britain tolerated racism had to be 'regretted and countered'. So how unfortunate that, just before Ofcom underlined that message, Blair's industry minister used what education secretary Alan Johnson later called 'the language of the BNP'.
The Jade Goody of the government front benches appeared to be suggesting that newly arrived migrants living in damp squalor with an asthmatic child should be leapfrogged by the less needy indigenous family. This is a loathsome argument, especially since migrants currently get only a tiny percentage of social housing.
I am glad, though, that Mrs Hodge spoke out. Although several of her colleagues professed horror, she is unique only in venturing into nationality. Other ministers have backed constituents who feel their loyalty to the sitting MP is being tested by neighbours with anti-social ways and hellish children. The most illiberal policies of Blair's tenure have been built on intolerance of one sort or another.
It is easy to imagine Jade, Jo and Danielle as wavering Hodge supporters, though there is no evidence that any of them would ever vote BNP. However vile their conduct, this was television, not the Old Kent Road. Where reality shows serve any purpose, it is surely to spark neuralgia in a complacent society.
If Big Brother got out of hand, then the reaction has matched it. Besides, a sort of weird justice has been done. Jade is no longer 'the 25th most inferlential [sic] person in the world'. Shilpa has been to Parliament and met the Queen. It would be more than a pity if Channel 4 were now to be privatised by Gordon Brown and Big Brother made into a talking shop for housemates with Lady Bracknell manners, a tofu habit and a social conscience.
Such a result would demonstrate the very intolerance that the programme's critics deplore. It would also smash one small mirror on a country much more divided than it ever notices. Evidence of racism and dishonesty can never be justified or ignored. Nonetheless, the suspicion remains that the Big Brother circus has become what Jade would call an 'escape goat' for much more dangerous failings.
Guardian
March 23, 2007
Soul diva Bev joins our anti-racism drive
People spat at my mum in the street because she was black...we have to teach Britain not to hate
She's Britain's Queen of Soul who wowed the crowds on a recent tour with comeback kings Take That. But life hasn't always been as good for singer Beverley Knight. The 34-year-old still bears the scars of racist abuse she suffered as a little girl growing up in Wolverhampton.
The star, who has a string of chart-topping hits and an MBE, is speaking out for the first time about how she and her family were targeted because of the colour of their skin. And she is urging everybody to support the Daily Mirror's Hope Not Hate anti-racism campaign, which was launched yesterday.
Our two-week bus tour across the country aims to celebrate all that is great about Britain. And spread the message - hope not hate...
'I'm the first generation of my family to be born in Britain - my parents were born and raised in Jamaica. Living in Wolverhampton was very diverse and mixed, and most people got along pretty well most of the time. But from a very early age I was aware of hostility towards people like me and my family. Of course, back then I didn't know it was racism, I was too young to understand. It was a dodgy time. The National Front had its headquarters just down the road in Walsall and they did their best to stir up trouble.
'School could be awful at times. I remember being in maths class when I was seven and I was the only black person in the top stream. Other kids would say things like: "Your skin's black because you haven't washed" and "your hair's like a Brillo pad". I did my best to ignore them, but it just got worse. Until one day the teacher went out of the class and this girl starting chanting: "Blackie, blackie." And soon the whole class caught on.
'I got very upset because I felt horribly isolated - I still remember that feeling now. I knew they picked on me because I was black. They were listening to their parents, that's the problem. When I told the teacher she just said: "Oh sit down, you're causing trouble." So I said: "But they're calling me names." And she replied: "Well just call them whities then." I went home and sobbed to my mum and she went straight down there and said this was unacceptable. The next day, in the middle of the lesson, I was removed from the class and sent to the lower stream where there were other black people. That was their way of dealing with it.
'But what happened to me as a child was so trivial in comparison to what my parents suffered. My dad came to Britain in 1959, Mum in 1962. She says it was November, it was freezing and she'd never seen snow before. Once, shortly after my dad arrived in the country, he had to defend himself against a gang of about 20 men. It was Dad and three of his brothers and they were only young.
'Wolverhampton was a different place back then. My mother was spat at, called names and shouted at in the street. People would make excuses not to serve you or let you on to public transport. Buses would drive past or kick you off. I think we have made astonishing progress but we still have a way to go.
'My parents went through hell. Those days may have gone but you still get comments from people. People still say to my mum: "Oh those black people, they're always fighting with knives, they're lazy and they don't want to work." When my mum makes a comment back, they say: "Oh not you! You're different!"
'Some people will ask daft questions and just not realise, like: "Where did you learn to speak English like that?" They're not racist, they're just not engaging their brain. They look at you and see that you're black and think you can't be from here, even though your accent is from Wolverhampton. Some people speak innocently out of ignorance and some people speak with racial intent. Most of the time you can completely see the difference. The race row on Celebrity Big Brother was shocking. I was so disappointed with Jo O'Meara. I had worked with her on Just The Two Of Us, and we had a laugh together.
'Jade Goody is not a clever girl. The reason she got the brunt of the criticism is probably because she was the mouthiest of the lot. She was daft enough to put her mouth into action far too many times. But the comments that cut to the core came from Danielle Lloyd. With Jade, to a certain extent, you have to ignore the ignorant rantings of someone who's not very clever. But Danielle said: "F**k off home." I remember those comments when I was a child, and they still hurt.
'Once in Italy, two of my band members, Carlos and Joe, went into the bank for some money. The woman took one look at these two black guys, one of them pretty big and powerful, and she pushed the panic button. I couldn't believe it.
'Carlos said the next thing he knew he was being hauled out and told to spread against the wall with a gun aimed at him. It was awful for them. Sadly it doesn't surprise me that people can still behave like this. Not everywhere is Britain. As we've seen in very recent cases, Britain isn't perfect, but we're doing a lot better than our European cousins.
'There are far-right parties in other countries that have much more of a foothold than the BNP has here. But we can't be complacent where racism is concerned and, in some parts of the UK, the BNP is on the rise. This has got to stop! I was lucky because my parents taught me to be proud of my heritage and of being British. They would say: "You are a child of Britain, you were born in Wolverhampton, raised in Wolverhampton, and we want you to be proud of that." And I was not the kind of person to cower, ever. I was proud of me and who I was, I always had an inner confidence. But stereotypes are so deeply entrenched and people hold on to them.
People must learn not to hate someone because of where they're from. The reality is that no matter what the colour of your skin, or where you're from, we're all going through the same struggle - just trying to get through life the best we can.'
CATCH OUR CAMPAIGN BUS
Tomorrow the Hope Not Hate bus leaves London for Glasgow on its mission to celebrate modern Britain. Over the next fortnight our red double-decker bus will be coming to you, bringing a message of hope to communities across the country. Our bus will be visiting Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus in London tomorrow afternoon.
And from 10am on Saturday we will be at Dagenham Civic Centre in Rainham Road North. Then at Kilverts Field in Grays, Thurrock, from 12.30am-2.30pm.
By Sunday lunchtime, we'll have reached the Golden Mile in Leicester.
Here's a list of our planned stops...
Fri 23 March: Trafalgar Square, London
Sat 24 March: Dagenham & Thurrock
Sun 25 March: Leicester
Mon 26 March: Nottingham & Lincoln
Tues 27 March: Sheffield
Weds 28 March: Oldham & Manchester
Thurs 29 March: Liverpool & Wrexham
Fri 30 March: Dudley & Birmingham
Sat 31 March: Stoke-on-Trent
Sun 1 April: Sandwell, West Bromwich
Mon 2 April: Blackburn & Burnley
Tues 3 April: Keighley, Bradford & Batley
Weds 4 April: Leeds
Thurs 5 April: Sunderland & Newcastle
Fri 6 April: Glasgow
Mirror
She's Britain's Queen of Soul who wowed the crowds on a recent tour with comeback kings Take That. But life hasn't always been as good for singer Beverley Knight. The 34-year-old still bears the scars of racist abuse she suffered as a little girl growing up in Wolverhampton.
The star, who has a string of chart-topping hits and an MBE, is speaking out for the first time about how she and her family were targeted because of the colour of their skin. And she is urging everybody to support the Daily Mirror's Hope Not Hate anti-racism campaign, which was launched yesterday.
Our two-week bus tour across the country aims to celebrate all that is great about Britain. And spread the message - hope not hate...
'I'm the first generation of my family to be born in Britain - my parents were born and raised in Jamaica. Living in Wolverhampton was very diverse and mixed, and most people got along pretty well most of the time. But from a very early age I was aware of hostility towards people like me and my family. Of course, back then I didn't know it was racism, I was too young to understand. It was a dodgy time. The National Front had its headquarters just down the road in Walsall and they did their best to stir up trouble.
'School could be awful at times. I remember being in maths class when I was seven and I was the only black person in the top stream. Other kids would say things like: "Your skin's black because you haven't washed" and "your hair's like a Brillo pad". I did my best to ignore them, but it just got worse. Until one day the teacher went out of the class and this girl starting chanting: "Blackie, blackie." And soon the whole class caught on.
'I got very upset because I felt horribly isolated - I still remember that feeling now. I knew they picked on me because I was black. They were listening to their parents, that's the problem. When I told the teacher she just said: "Oh sit down, you're causing trouble." So I said: "But they're calling me names." And she replied: "Well just call them whities then." I went home and sobbed to my mum and she went straight down there and said this was unacceptable. The next day, in the middle of the lesson, I was removed from the class and sent to the lower stream where there were other black people. That was their way of dealing with it.
'But what happened to me as a child was so trivial in comparison to what my parents suffered. My dad came to Britain in 1959, Mum in 1962. She says it was November, it was freezing and she'd never seen snow before. Once, shortly after my dad arrived in the country, he had to defend himself against a gang of about 20 men. It was Dad and three of his brothers and they were only young.
'Wolverhampton was a different place back then. My mother was spat at, called names and shouted at in the street. People would make excuses not to serve you or let you on to public transport. Buses would drive past or kick you off. I think we have made astonishing progress but we still have a way to go.
'My parents went through hell. Those days may have gone but you still get comments from people. People still say to my mum: "Oh those black people, they're always fighting with knives, they're lazy and they don't want to work." When my mum makes a comment back, they say: "Oh not you! You're different!"
'Some people will ask daft questions and just not realise, like: "Where did you learn to speak English like that?" They're not racist, they're just not engaging their brain. They look at you and see that you're black and think you can't be from here, even though your accent is from Wolverhampton. Some people speak innocently out of ignorance and some people speak with racial intent. Most of the time you can completely see the difference. The race row on Celebrity Big Brother was shocking. I was so disappointed with Jo O'Meara. I had worked with her on Just The Two Of Us, and we had a laugh together.
'Jade Goody is not a clever girl. The reason she got the brunt of the criticism is probably because she was the mouthiest of the lot. She was daft enough to put her mouth into action far too many times. But the comments that cut to the core came from Danielle Lloyd. With Jade, to a certain extent, you have to ignore the ignorant rantings of someone who's not very clever. But Danielle said: "F**k off home." I remember those comments when I was a child, and they still hurt.
'Once in Italy, two of my band members, Carlos and Joe, went into the bank for some money. The woman took one look at these two black guys, one of them pretty big and powerful, and she pushed the panic button. I couldn't believe it.
'Carlos said the next thing he knew he was being hauled out and told to spread against the wall with a gun aimed at him. It was awful for them. Sadly it doesn't surprise me that people can still behave like this. Not everywhere is Britain. As we've seen in very recent cases, Britain isn't perfect, but we're doing a lot better than our European cousins.
'There are far-right parties in other countries that have much more of a foothold than the BNP has here. But we can't be complacent where racism is concerned and, in some parts of the UK, the BNP is on the rise. This has got to stop! I was lucky because my parents taught me to be proud of my heritage and of being British. They would say: "You are a child of Britain, you were born in Wolverhampton, raised in Wolverhampton, and we want you to be proud of that." And I was not the kind of person to cower, ever. I was proud of me and who I was, I always had an inner confidence. But stereotypes are so deeply entrenched and people hold on to them.
People must learn not to hate someone because of where they're from. The reality is that no matter what the colour of your skin, or where you're from, we're all going through the same struggle - just trying to get through life the best we can.'
CATCH OUR CAMPAIGN BUS
Tomorrow the Hope Not Hate bus leaves London for Glasgow on its mission to celebrate modern Britain. Over the next fortnight our red double-decker bus will be coming to you, bringing a message of hope to communities across the country. Our bus will be visiting Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus in London tomorrow afternoon.
And from 10am on Saturday we will be at Dagenham Civic Centre in Rainham Road North. Then at Kilverts Field in Grays, Thurrock, from 12.30am-2.30pm.
By Sunday lunchtime, we'll have reached the Golden Mile in Leicester.
Here's a list of our planned stops...
Fri 23 March: Trafalgar Square, London
Sat 24 March: Dagenham & Thurrock
Sun 25 March: Leicester
Mon 26 March: Nottingham & Lincoln
Tues 27 March: Sheffield
Weds 28 March: Oldham & Manchester
Thurs 29 March: Liverpool & Wrexham
Fri 30 March: Dudley & Birmingham
Sat 31 March: Stoke-on-Trent
Sun 1 April: Sandwell, West Bromwich
Mon 2 April: Blackburn & Burnley
Tues 3 April: Keighley, Bradford & Batley
Weds 4 April: Leeds
Thurs 5 April: Sunderland & Newcastle
Fri 6 April: Glasgow
Mirror
Labels:
anti-racism,
Big Brother,
Black,
BNP,
far-right,
gun,
Hope not Hate,
spat
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