Alex Wheatle, the Bard of Brixton

0:00Today's guest is Ashley John Baptiste writer, broadcaster, one time boy band member too. His book, called Looked After, was about growing up in care and was published last year. It's a proper, powerful read. Welcome to Great Lives, Ashley. Whom have you picked? I have picked Alex Wheatle. He is an author. His life was given a broader platform because it was made into part of Steve McQueen's The Small Axe series, which is essentially a collection of historical dramas about Black Britain. It's absolutely amazing. I've seen it. Absolutely. Phenomenal, yeah. Amazing, yes. Of course, he was placed into care in the 60s, a residential care home on the fringes of Croydon.

0:50And in that care home, he experienced quite severe racism and physical abuse. Here's a picture of him as a little boy. Oh, look at him. Yes. I sound a bit obsessive. I do not really know him, but I feel like I know him so well. And I look at that photo and I just feel like I see myself. Alex Sweetle, the Brixton Bard, was given an MBE for his services to literature in 2008, but his biggest success came with his Cronkton series of novels, which were for young adults. Tell us about these, Ashley. Yeah, so essentially a series of books about this fictional council estate touching. Called Cronkton.

1:28Called Cronkton, touching on so many of the issues that his life embodied, class, race, identity. There's a lot about him that interests me. And I have to say this, another reason why I'm interested in him. Learning more about his life is because when I set out to write my book, which he referred to, I actually DM'd him. didn't know him I'd never met him he responded really generously he gave me advice about writing he gave me his contact details that's a really generous thing to do right they say don't meet your heroes yeah and there I was the emming him and he was so so lovely and thoughtful and I had my book launch last year because the book came out last year and I invited him and he said that he couldn't come because he had health issues yeah he was pretty ill wasn't he yeah now of course at the time i couldn't have preempted what would happen he passed earlier this year yeah of prostate cancer really bittersweet and i suppose going back to why i'm interested in him beyond that communication he's a dad he's a care experienced father he's also a girl dad i'm a girl dad i've got two little girls so there's so much i'd want to ask him about in terms of family in terms of being a writer and a broadcaster and also navigating the British care system as a black male.

2:51Let's hear from the man himself. Here he is at the Hay Festival just last year when he was on a panel and being asked questions by youngsters. Play the tape. What age were you all when you started writing? Mid-teens, 15, 16, my first days in Brixton when I kept a journal. Sometimes I'd write a little lyric because I attempted to be a songwriter back in those days. I tried to be the new Bob Marley. Didn't quite work out. Poetry and my song lyrics. And do you remember the moment when you first thought you were satisfied with what you'd written and you thought, oh, that is really good? Oh, yes. There was a party just after the Brits and Uprising of 1981 and I performed a lyric that the crowd really liked.

3:39Can you remember the lyrics? Oh yeah. You want to hear it? Okay, it goes something like Operising, it's the operising Operising, it's the operising We're sick and tired of the ghetto housing And the jam's host are on police beating We have no work and we have no shilling We can't take no more of this suffering When you better send for the army and the home. God, we're going to mash up and burn down the Scotland Yard. Come listen, people, to the Brixton Bard.

4:19That's fantastic. You don't? He even sounds a bit like you. Does he? Yes. I'll take that. I mean, I don't have the Jamaican twang, but I am flattered. We were listening to him singing about uprising. and that's a reference to the Brixton riot that he was involved in. There's this amazing film that you've already mentioned, made more recently about his life, and I wonder if you actually can read this extract from his autobiography. It's from the opening chapter entitled An Unsuitable Birth. I was born Alec Alfonso Wheatle in London on January 3rd, 1963, into a volatile situation. My mother, Almira, who had arrived in the UK in the early 1960s with her husband and children, had a brief affair with my Jamaican-born father, Alfred.

5:09Then my mother's husband came over on a surprise visit, only to find his wife pregnant. Hmm. Wow. He did say of his father that Alfred did the best he could. And then packed off to a children's home. and from that point forward he says, I had no family contact whatsoever. I was essentially orphaned. Is this one reason why you're nominating him today, why you're nominating him today? Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, growing up, I never saw anyone like me in the public domain. Alex was one of the first people I heard about, a writer who was care experienced, who essentially grew up, spent his whole childhood in the care system.

5:57He even talked quite posh. Yeah, he did. He must have felt like a fish out of water in some ways. You know, Alex has, from what I can see, Alex has an incredible superpower, which is that of assimilation and really being able to move between different cultural spaces. That sensitivity is developed often in adversity. I relate to it so well. I was shunted between foster homes in South London. Then I go to Cambridge University, which is worlds apart from anything I knew. For him, it's, you know, it's the other way around. He grows up in a care home in Surrey with white people. Then he's turfed into Brixton.

6:39It's sort of when it was at its height of sort of black power and the Rostefarian movement. So that ability to assimilate and integrate, he did it so well. It's something that really sticks out to me. And you see it in the Small Axe film about him where he has a really posh accent. at the start of his time in Brixton. And then over time, you hear it when he's performing in that clip you just shared, the really rugged Jamaican dialects that he develops. And that ability to transform and change is so indicative for many who grew up in Kent. He was memorably turned into a film in that Small Axe anthology that we've been talking about in 2020.

7:21Let's hear a clip. It's from early on in his life when Alex had recently got out of care and been moved, as you've just said, into a hostel in Brixton. These are your keys. Don't lose them. These are the rules. Learn them. Any questions? Good.

7:43Are you Cuckoo? Are you the beast? Let me be here myself. You're seriously Boston PVC? From where on this earth did you land? Charlie Hicks, in Surrey. Surrey? Then they dress you there with gums made by the farm animals.

8:02You got any corn? You got any corn? I've got some pot noodle they sent me off with. Oh, God. Oh, Lord. Money, man. Money. You got money? Why? Leave him when he alone. Shay Cole playing Alex Wheatle in the Small Axe anthology of films from 2020. Did this film make an impression on you, Ashley? It sounds like it did. So good. So good. I don't know where to start, really. There's a scene where he's walking along an estate and I believe he has a tear streaming down his face. He's just come from his mate's house at Christmas where whoever's care experience will know that Christmas can be a horrible time because you don't necessarily have a family to go to.

8:54He's walking along that estate with a tyranny's eye and the sense of loneliness and isolation and abandonment that that shot depicts is so palpable, especially for someone like me who knows that position of isolation and abandonment all too well. It's actually a magnificent piece of acting. It really is. It's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. and I don't know Shea's care experience but whatever he tapped into there was almost spiritual. It was so good. At some point in this programme, we're going to hear from Lem Sisse, poet and a previous guest on Great Lives and someone who knew Alex for the last 20 years of his life.

9:34Lem's not with us right now as he's not feeling well enough to come in but I'm hoping the producer can record him before we go on air. So instead, let's hear from someone else who's known him for a very long time. Vanessa Walters, the author of Rude Girls, she also wrote the introduction to Alex's autobiography and our hardworking producer has just spoken to her in Brooklyn, New York. I think we were kindred spirits because we actually met at a joint book reading. East of Aker Lane had just come out and Rude Girls had just come out, so we were at this book reading and as is often the way, no one showed up to our book reading so we were in the shopping center I can't remember the name of the bookshop then but we were just sitting there chatting we kind of bonded in that moment of like we are not the big writers we are not establishment people we probably shouldn't even be here right because I'm a black teenager from East London at the time and Alex you know he's a working class guy from Brixton neither of us look like writers and both of us have huge imposter syndrome and over the years we often complained I think Alex complained more than I did about how difficult it was to be a writer and to exist outside accepted literary tropes and I kind of agree with him that for a long time he was overlooked.

11:14Did he feel like an outsider? Did he talk to you about that? Alex always felt like an outsider even after he got his MBE and his Guardian Prize he still felt like an outsider. This was his hill to die on was like representing outsiders. We had some similarities. I had a somewhat Dickensian childhood too, you know, battling against the establishment, often getting disappointed. And Alex would often tell me about the children's home, about his inspiration for his characters, the things he had suffered with his looking for his mother. I don't think you really recover from something like that. So it was a trauma that Alex coped with by revisiting it.

12:12Does any of this resonate with you, Ashley? Yeah, it's really moving hearing Vanessa talk about Alex, especially that idea that you revisit your trauma in your writing is something that I really relate to. The idea that you are still nursing your childhood wounds. Yeah. Here he is again from his autobiography talking about that time in care. I was struck with coal shovels, buckets, fire pokers, wooden hairbrushes, wet towels, casserole pots, breadboards, and so the list goes on. I was forever in a state of terror. I did not experience the severity of abuse that Alex clearly did. I once had a foster mum tell me that I was a mistake.

13:01What a terrible thing to say to a child. I've faced a range of moments that have felt abusive at the time. Bigger picture, the outcomes for looked after children and care experienced young people compared to the national public. So outcomes in higher education, homelessness, custody, they are not good for looked after young people. Alex's journey epitomises it. And of course, he had his moment in times of rebellion. You know, when you look at his accolades, his writing achievements, they are all the more remarkable when you consider just how impoverished and disadvantaged he was as a young person.

13:42Let's hear from him again. I arrived in Brixton at 14 after spending some time away in a Surrey children's home. and my view of the police was a very good one. And when I came to Brixen and I was told by the new friends that I made that they were the enemy, and slowly but surely I found out why they were the enemy. Which was how? When I was 16, we had a party and we was asked to turn the music down by officers. I have to admit we didn't, but the response was I could not quite believe. There were two vans, I think the SPG vans, they came in, they busted down the door, busted down all the furniture, Ripped up the floorboards, arrested about 30 of us.

14:23Some of my roster friends, they're lots of torn out of their scouts. Their hair was torn off? Yep. Alex talking to Sue McGregor in 2011 about the build-up to the riots, which turned out to be the most serious civil disturbance in a century, with many injured on both sides. Alex has spoken about his involvement in the Brixton riots. he has spoken about his distrust of the police and of course there was a recent BBC panorama where there was undercover filming where police said derogatory comments about different groups it tells you that that scepticism that Alex had of the police is clearly what determined a lot of his behaviour a slightly challenging question perhaps but he was pretty fighty as a kid and as a young man wasn't he?

15:13I think when you're dealt the sort of cards that he clearly was, trauma will manifest itself in your life. You know, if you're a victim of racism in the way that he was, physically abused in the home that you lived in, completely dejected and rejected by society, of course all of that stuff is going to manifest itself in ways that are unfavourable. He received a nine-month sentence for his part in the Brixton riots. The truth was, he once wrote, that I and so many others were ready for war. I think the real gift for Alex comes in writing and reading. And of course, when he's, I believe, Wormwood Scrubs, when he does a stint, it's his ruster cellmate, Simeon, who introduces him to reading.

16:02Yes. And that's where the real lightbulb moment comes for him. He's able to direct his energy, that pain, that trauma into something really meaningful and positive, which, of course, for him, over time will become writing incredible books. The real question is, is where would Alex be or where would he have ended up if he didn't find his love for literature? Yeah, yeah. You're listening to The Great Life of Alex Wheatle, author of the Cronkton series of novels, as well as Brixton Rock and an autobiography called Sufferer. It's from that book that our next extract comes, and it's read by Anthony Welsh.

16:43In December 1987, a few weeks before my 25th birthday, I settled into my seat for my flight to Kingston, Jamaica. As the stewardess smiled and checked my seatbelt, I still hadn't decided if I should embrace my father or kill him. Oh, Alex, let me just think about what I want to say. I didn't meet my dad until I was in my mid-twenties. I have no relationship with my dad now. It was very fleeting for reasons that I won't go into. But the multitude of emotions ranging from, I miss this bloke who I've never met, to what he says, do I want to kill him? I relate to that. I mean, there's plenty of kids who have the same response.

17:32And I noticed you groaned when he said, I didn't know if I wanted to embrace him or kill him. I groaned because I relate to it. And he articulates it to the nail. He's just so accurate in how he expresses it. He ended up feeling sorry for his father, but not sure whether he could forgive him. And these are boundaries, right, that you always navigate as someone who's grown up in care. His first book, Brixton Rock, won a New London Writers' Award, and that was in 1999. But before that, his big love had been music, and that comes out in the film. Do you know much about that chapter of his life? I know that he was a massive reggae fan.

18:12Yeah. Which is interesting because my assumption is that he wasn't exposed to a lot of reggae pre-Brixton. Of course, he talks about the Surrey care home. Yeah. He had the posh accent. Yeah. Not a lot of reggae there, I imagine. He didn't as a lot of reggae. But I think there's something about tapping into your cultural heritage that is really special. And whilst Brixton had some challenges, of course, the rights where he ends up in custody, what's really beautiful about his Brixton time is that he's able to tap into his love of music and reggae and develop as a lyricist. Lem Sisse, as we said earlier, knew Alex for about the last 20 years of his life.

18:52He was the official poet at the London Olympics in 2012. And before that, the writer in residence at London's South Bank. and I'm hoping here that we can talk to Lem about his first impressions of the man. I first met Alex in 2009 in my office on the edge of the Thames as writer-in-residence at the South Bank Centre. Now, the South Bank Centre is in Lambeth, and Alex lived in Brixton, which is the borough of Lambeth. In fact, Lambeth Town Hall is just probably really close to where he lived. He came to meet me and said, why are you writer in residence at the Southbank Centre? He was not happy.

19:40You know, I've lived here all my life and this place has never booked me, never called me, never picked me up, and I'm a writer. I've never been on in its festivals. And he was angry. The reason I'm telling you that story is because it tells you the nature of the man. You know, Alex was not afraid. He'd been through enough in his life. He was not afraid. All I had for him was love and a sense that, oh, we're going to be friends. And he had the same thing as well. Yeah. Did you become friends after this bumpy start? Yeah, we did in our sort of like dysfunctional kind of both of us had been in care way.

20:25Because from that day, I watched his career grow. and you would not recognise the man he was then with the award-winning man that he is now, except you would. He was fun. He had a great smile. You know, when he cracked a smile, the kind of world melted around him, really. So the fact that Steve McQueen, Sir Steve McQueen, would name an entire film of the name Alex Wheatle, The fact that that could happen tells me about the power of his spirit.

21:06You know, people will say, they will say, oh, you're lucky because you've got a story. And your story of loss in your childhood has been very good for you as a writer. People never say, gosh, imagine what you would have done if you'd have not had that experience. Imagine what a writer you would have been if you'd have not had all those things that held you back in your childhood. In other words, Alex Wheatle was a writer regardless of what happened to him, not because of it. As a kid, I always loved the quest stories, you know, King Arthur is holy grail. And so the idea came about that I wanted these, my heroes, who live in a very, oh God, negative part of Cronkton town, and wanting to go on this quest to retrieve a girl's phone.

21:59And on that quest, they have to go across gangland territory and all kinds of dangers. And it's not only just a danger of retrieving a phone, but getting back home. They're trying the best they can. They're trying to deal with very difficult situations going on in this quest. And so there's a human side to it and there's a friendship side to it. And in the end, hopefully, you know, friendship wins. And is this the first time one of your works has been adapted? Brixton Rock was adapted for The Young Vic a number of years ago, my debut novel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of my work has been adapted into shorts for film and so forth.

22:34OK, so this isn't new to you? Not entirely new to me, but exciting nonetheless. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alex Wheatle talking to Graham Norton in 2020. A feeling of good nature comes across from that. And when you think of everything he'd been through, to be able to be and feel quite sunny about things. You raise a really good point, which was he really did have a troublesome chapter. But the impression I get of him is that he is a good soul. Like, he is a good soul. And when you hear him talking, when you read his work, when you see him in the Small Axe film, you do get this impression that Alex is a good guy.

23:12And that's what we all want to be, isn't it? When all's said and done, we want to know that our lives represented something good and wholesome and meaningful. and to me it's undeniable that Alex's life was that. I have a reflection to make that perhaps has some resonance for you as well. One of our Great Lives programmes ages ago was Rudyard Kipling. Rudyard Kipling was effectively abandoned by his parents because they were in the Indian civil service. He was put in the care of a brutal foster mother in Portsmouth who once made him walk around Portsmouth with a placard saying, I am a liar, and he was horribly bullied by his stepbrother.

23:56Because of that experience, he retreated into an interior world, the world of his imagination, and he made up stories. I find it hard to separate his genius from the awful time that he had as a child. I realise that a brutal childhood will often end up in a miserable adulthood too but sometimes something breaks through and I think that's where it's coming from I think he has drawn from his adversity to inspire people and to be an inspiration to other care experienced people like myself and that is easier said than done most listeners may not know who I am but I went to Cambridge University I've got a few accolades.

24:43And I have a career. Yeah, I have a career that I couldn't have imagined growing up. That doesn't mean you graduate from that feeling of being the little looked after child. You know, here I am on Great Lives, Radio 4, talking about Alex Wheatle. As a little kid who was getting excluded from school, I could never have imagined that I'd be doing stuff like this. I would be able to write a book that has impact. You know, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, made my book, his book of 2024. there was a bit of a... Really? Yeah, we're tweeting Reddit, you know, he messaged me about it and so that point that Alex raises about that inner child yeah, 100 % I relate to that Here's Vanessa Walters again.

25:24Alex's stories, she writes, are a gift to us to never lose hope His characters are vivid and relatable to absolutely anyone loved worldwide for their vivid characters and heart pounding scenes. They were inspired by a boy in the UK who knew nothing about himself but found a rich heritage. We haven't talked much about his family life, but it's important to say that he really did have one and it mattered to him. He raised a family with Beverley and we were in touch with his daughter Serena in the run-up to the programme. And you're quite right, most people who suffered as he suffered will have been broken by it.

26:05But here was a man who was made in some ways, not broken. I love what Vanessa said about rich heritage, because when you grow up in care and you feel as if your identity is minimal and you don't have a family and you don't have a strong support network, it can be easy to kind of just cave into that sort of outcome for your life. But what he has built is a really rich community. You think about Brixton, you think about his children, you think about his writing career, you think about his partner. What's so phenomenal about him as an individual, beyond just his talent, is the resilience he's shown in forming a really special community, which is so rich.

26:44He died only a few months ago. What might he have done? What might he have become if he had lived? Very selfishly, maybe I would have got a coffee with him. In fact, I have no doubt that he would have given me a bit of time, probably taken me for lunch. The amount of comments and snaps I came across on social media of people talking about the impact that Alex had on their lives and their work was just so remarkable and special to observe. My thanks to you, Ashley, for suggesting Alex Wheatle, the Brixton Bard who died too soon. And also to Lem Sesse, and remotely in New York, to Vanessa Walters as well.

27:27And you can find Lem's own choice for great lives on BBC Sounds. Goodbye.