Do you still come across racism?
It’s what they call institutionalised today. We could be walking down the corridor, there will be someone walking towards us and I could pretty much tell whether they’re racist or not, just by some form of interaction…
me and tell it to my face like in the old days but it happened once not so long ago and I didn’t like it.
Oh?
It was really bad. I thought, “This is not good.”
a big game like Liverpool and Leeds on a black and white TV. It must have been one of the big games with Kevin Keegan and I can remember watching it and thinking “Yeah, that’s the guy. Those are the boys I like, them ones.” So I went back to school next day and I’m a Liverpool fan. I think most kids wanted to be a footballer where I grew up.
A look or a glance or a look away…
It could be. When I was younger I used to walk around thinking that people thought I was somebody else, or someone famous, and they just thought I was Lenny Henry or somebody. I thought, “Why are people looking at me like that?” I can’t explain to you, Jason. I can’t make you feel it.
So fairly recently?
Two or three years ago. Again, it was just ignorance and drunkenness. But I was able to put the person right without getting physical.
So, footballer or rock star?
Yes… well, rock star came a bit later. I got to a teenage and it was like, “Okay…” I was just thinking quick money. I guess it’s the equivalent of these kids going to the Big Brother house now, isn’t it?
So, as a kid growing up in South London, what career path did you envisage for yourself?
A footballer or a rock star.
But you still sense it; it’s just not as aggressive?
It’s there, in the same number… the same large quantity, I believe it’s actually still there but because it’s institutionalised it’s kind of gone underground which means it’s harder for me now to be able to see it and this isn’t just an issue of racism, it’s women, it’s homosexuals, the issue is the same across those groups as well. So it isn’t exclusive to me being black. I used to think I’d prefer someone to come up to
And who were you going to play for?
I was definitely going to play for Liverpool. I suppose in the 70s they were the team to support. I was probably seven or eight when I was asked “what team do you support?” I replied “I’ll tell you tomorrow.” And I went home and I remember watching a game on TV, I think it might have been
Of course, you did neither of those and you ended up as a broker.
Yes, for a computer company. It was computer hardware/software. I was in sales and marketing for about ten years. But before that I started off selling advertising space in Materials and Plastic News. And then after a while I just thought, “No, this not what I want to do. I really don’t want to be in sales anymore.” And not long before that we’d gone out for
87