British | Nigerian
My parents met in Plymouth, UK at a dance in the early 1960’s. My Father was a captain in the Nigerian Navy and was studying at the Manadon Naval Engineering College in Plymouth in 1961. I was born in 1962 and stayed with my Mother and Grandparents, and my Father returned to Nigeria to assist his country in the Biafran War. So their different cultures weren’t ever combined at all. Over the past 30 years I’ve taken affirmative action to look into my African family roots and was able to have a good relationship with my Father until his death in 2011. I am now married to a most wonderfully beautiful British woman of Jamaican/Indian heritage. We’ve been together just over 15 years and have twin boys.
I have experienced some racism in my life, primarily when I served as a police officer in the Metropolitan Police Service in London, UK. It was generally very subtle inside the service, with the odd remark, and once I recall an inaction to act upon an issue by a supervising officer, when I reported a particular incident to him, regarding a racist tirade that was made upon me by another officer, off duty at a police section house. But I was also at the forefront of racist abuse (called a Judas/traitor) whilst on public order duty in the early 1980’s in South London, by the African/Caribbean cultures, and had to be taken away from the front line, to protect me. I also experienced little of the above subtle moments whilst a police officer in the Edmonton Police Service in Alberta, Canada.
I have to say that my experiences in both services were very positive overall, and apart from a few bad apples, I had many good friends and acquaintances who I had very good relationships with and am still in touch with a few of them. Professionally I would probably have gone up through the ranks, had I decided to make policing a life career. But my heart lay in the performing arts, and I eventually left policing in 1996 to become an actor, which I am still fortunately doing, most recently originating the role of James Morse in the new West End production of Pretty Woman The Musical at the Piccadilly Theatre.
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