Ade Adepitan - ‘At 16 I’d seen more violence than anyone should ever see’

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0:42Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that flips the traditional interview format on its head and asks its guests to talk about the things that went wrong rather than right. Would you like a celebrity agony aunt or uncle helping you? What? Of course you would. Each week, my guest and I answer your questions and celebrate your failures in Failing with Friends. It'll be something like this one with Addy. I want to say to my son, you know, I'll be there. If you mess up, I'll be there, you know, and I'll still love you and I'll still care for you and I'll still find a way to make it work. And we need to have that arm wrapped around the whole of society.

1:23Do join in by following the link in the podcast notes or look out for my call-outs once a month on Instagram.

1:32Adi Adepitan is a TV presenter, documentary maker and championship wheelchair basketball player. He's been awarded an MBE for his services to disability sport and in 2020 earned himself a place in the power list of the most influential black British people. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, he contracted polio at 15 months. He lost the use of his left leg and sustained damage to the right, ultimately leaving him unable to walk. In search of a better future for their son, Addy's parents moved to the UK when he was three. He grew up in East London and was determined to become an international athlete, initially against the wishes of his mother and father.

2:17But by 2004, he was part of the great British basketball team that won bronze at the Summer Paralympics in Athens. The following year, it was his winning shot that scooped the British team the Paralympic World Cup. He later moved into TV presenting, where his confident, engaging energy made him a natural. His travel programs and documentaries have seen him climb a Nicaraguan volcano, almost be kidnapped in Mexico, and narrowly escape a fatal shooting in Nigeria. His sports punditry is arguably less fraught with danger. And from the 28th of August, he'll be back on our screens presenting Channel 4's coverage of the Paralympic games.

3:01I feel I have to prove myself in every room I enter, he says. As a black working class person in a wheelchair, people have made assumptions about my intelligence and my capabilities for my whole life. Ade, welcome to How to Fail. Elizabeth, that was amazing. Where did you get all that from? I'm just blown away. I'm so relieved because I feel nervous every single time I read out an introduction that I've got some salient fact horribly wrong. No, you know, there was stuff that you put in there that I couldn't even remember. And when you, as you were saying, it was like, oh, yeah, I did say that.

3:40The one thing that did make me chuckle, actually, is when you talked about the black power list, because there's a black power list and there was a disabled power list. And every time I think of them, I'm always like, I should have been way higher up on those lists. What number were you? How dare they put me so low in those. The Black Power List, I think I was quite low. I was probably in the 30s or 40s. Outrageous. And I think I just made the top 10 in the disability power list. But that's the competitive side of me coming out. But that was so interesting because actually before we started recording, we were talking about that competitive mindset and how as an elite athlete, you have that mindset to go to when you are engaged with the sport that you're playing but how it doesn't always serve you in other aspects of your life can you expand on that a bit yeah sure um I think we were talking about it because we mentioned about how I'd met Michael Jordan and how he can as great a basketball player as he is you can feel that uh he's he can be quite closed off and I I get that I remember when I was um at the height of like competition uh one of my friends used to say to me you know what happens every sort of like year before you're about to go to a Paralympics you usually end up splitting up with your partner because you just turn into such an asshole I know and I was like nah that's not right and then I split up with so many partners just before tournaments but it's you go into a place that's quite selfish it's really intense a deep place where it's all about winning it's all about doing what it takes to win but what I will caveat with is generally certainly with myself I wouldn't expect anything from the people who may seem who I may seem hard on that I wouldn't expect from myself you push yourself to such limits where you know I've come off training with my hands bleeding you know throwing up shooting until I was almost in in a daze you just you do everything to get yourself to that level and it's only when you come out of the sporting world and you hang around with everyday people hopefully that doesn't sound like I'm putting people down but you hang around with people in everyday people people in civil street that you just kind of realize actually that sort of way of living is not normal it's just not a place that's conducive you use it in small amounts but if you want to have friends and have relationships yeah it's not it's not the right place to go to and you are married now so there's a good relationship that has survived and you and you're a father so you've got a toddler yes do you sometimes have to catch yourself and wind yourself back in if you're playing games with him no not really I understand you know where that he's a toddler and where he's at there are moments where he can where he does things that are just like you know what toddlers are like they'll wind you up he's got so much to say for himself which is great he learned it off his mother and myself he actually is probably more competitive when we compete when we do stuff now than I am I used to think these these things were learnt behaviour but actually I'm starting to wonder whether it's genetic because he is madly competitive.

7:12I want to come back to the younger version of you but before I do I wonder if I can ask you about the Paralympics and how excited you are to be returning to the commentary box. Is it something that you can now fully enjoy rather than feeling the stress of actually participating um yes and no i mean it's still nerve-wracking presenting and being a part of where the paralympics is at now because i feel like i've been on this incredible journey with the paralympics when i when i was like 11 12 years old i'd never heard of the paralympics i didn't know existed and when i started competing and learning about it me and my friends all dreamt of going to the Paralympics.

7:57But one of the things we were always frustrated with is the lack of, one, the lack of coverage, but more so the lack of respect we felt that we were, the respect that we weren't being given as just athletes. It was that usual tokenistic stuff of the guys in wheelchairs when we had training sessions and we would go to sports centres or youth clubs and we'd have to like sort of beg for spaces on the court and like, you know, compete against that or try and convince people to say, yeah, okay, I know you've got badminton, but you know, we're, we're basketball players, you know, we play serious sport.

8:37Let us, let us have our game there or, you know, in a youth club, getting people to just take us seriously. And you go through that whole stage of like, you know, we train really hard. This is a great sport. This is an exciting sport to suddenly fast forward the clock 20 years later and you get to 2012. And suddenly we're getting millions of people watching the Paralympics. I'm presenting on Channel 4 with Claire Balding, the nation's sweetheart, you know, and you've got Oscar Pistorius at the time. One of the most well-known Paralympians in the world. It's bonkers. I mean, Elizabeth, can you imagine?

9:17It was literally like going from the Stone Age to Interstellar into another universe. And sometimes for me, when I'm working on the Paralympics, even today, I feel like it's an out of body experience. We're at the launch for the Paralympics and Channel 4 had spent all this money on it. You've got all these big sponsors and you're just like, wow, I can't believe I'm seeing all of this. But then you've also know you've got a job to do. But I feel a little bit of pressure in the fact that I want the Paralympics to do well. I want people to really love it. I want people to enjoy it as much as I enjoy it.

9:59And so in those terms, there is a little bit of pressure. Still putting pressure on yourself. I mean, I love it. It's part of what makes you great and not an arsehole, because there's that constant sense of, is this good enough? Your first failure belongs to your youth. And so before we get into it, because I know it must be a difficult one to talk about, I'd like to know a bit more about your parents coming to London from Nigeria and how much of a difficult choice that was for them. I contracted polio when I was 15 months old and I was born in Lagos, Nigeria, got an older sister. She's just over a year older than me and she was born with Down syndrome.

10:45And when I contracted polio, my parents realized, you know, they went from having one kid with special needs to suddenly two. in Lagos, Nigeria in the 70s, no infrastructure, no real knowledge of how to take care of kids with disabilities. And my parents realized that in order for us to get on, we had to leave Nigeria. And so the first difficult decision for them was to leave their careers behind. Both of them were teachers. My mom was in a primary school. My dad, I think, was in a secondary school. And he had an opportunity to become a head teacher. He gave that opportunity up because his sister had fallen ill.

11:29And so he took a year out to look after his sister. She'd recovered. He was trying to get his career back on track again. And then suddenly I'm born with polio. And so yet again, he has to put that on hold. They just thought, look, we have to get out of the country and we have to go to a country where there's going to be more opportunities there's going to be a better infrastructure for children with disabilities and so they used of all the resources they had to move us to the UK but unfortunately they didn't have enough to get both of us over you know I think there was problems with visas with also once you come to the UK trying to have get a house that was big enough to have all of us there and in the end it was decided that they could only bring one of us over initially and that they would at some point bring the other one over later and so they had the agonizing decision to choose between their two children as to who to leave behind whoever was going to be left behind would stay with my dad's sister and my dad's family and they would be looked after but still you know to not trouble with your family and I was the one who was chosen because my disability was physical my mum said I was crawling around on the floor it was really evident that I wasn't going to be able to walk.

12:50And it was developing country at the time. Lagos was, you know, the floor was extremely dirty everywhere you'd go. There was like open sewers and stuff like that. The sewage system was still open. You know, it was just a place where if someone like me spent so much time on the ground, I probably wouldn't last that long because of all the kind of diseases that I was going to catch. So from a practical reason, I was chosen to come to the UK, but that weighs heavy. It weighs heavy on you as a family, really, really heavy. And my parents, in a way, I mean, I don't blame them, but they would always say to me, you can't mess up.

13:34You can't fail because we've left your sister behind to give you this opportunity. So you've to make it you know and they wouldn't say in those direct words but I know that was what was required of me I knew that from probably four or five years old I knew that I couldn't fail you come to East London to Newham and a heads up now for any listeners that your first failure involves a racist attack. I can only imagine how racist that environment was. So we're talking late 70s, early 80s? Yeah, early 80s. Will you tell us about your first failure? Yeah, tough times. Very, very different times. I mean, racism was far more overt than, you know, it was commonplace for people to shout the N-word.

14:39or the P word when you were out in the streets. And I had quite a tight group of friends, a tight friendship group. It was three of us, you know, that hung out all the time. You know, one of my friends was Pakistani. The other one was West Indian, but he looked Indian and I'm African. And we hung out. We had a laugh. We were just quite quirky. But you knew on any given day, you had to be prepared that you were either going to get into some sort of physical altercation or there was going to be some sort of verbal abuse. And you had to be prepared for that. You know, I knew by the time I was probably 16, I'd seen more violence than anyone of that age or from those years should ever see.

15:29But on this one particular day, we used to go for lunch, out of school for lunch. All those schools started to warn kids saying, look, we should stay in for school dinners or even have your packed lunch in school because there was always some incident that would happen. My school, secondary school was in Stratford, but we used to go to Upton Park quite a lot to Queen's Market to get fish and chips or all sorts of different, whatever options there were there. And it was just nice to have the freedom to leave school. But a lot of the kids from my school got banned from Queen's Market because there was always something, some sort of physical fight really going on.

16:12we decided to go in the opposite direction to a place called green gate and we were getting chip butties or something like that and then there was a group of boys who i knew a little bit you know you've seen them around and you know we played football with them and they were always a little bit leery and yeah racist in in in some ways you know came and they saw one of my friends who was he's quite tall he was really like outgoing just an amazing amazing guy just that really really funny sometimes just a bit silly as well and and a bit embarrassing because he was so loud but just a nice nice guy and they made a beeline for him and they started calling him all sorts of names and it was just quite shocking because we're like 11 12 years old these guys were probably like 14 15 bigger and stronger and there was more of them and my mate responded jokingly and we were like you know just calm down there's no need for any of this and then they started uh pushing then they punched him um kicked him to the ground and like within it just like happened in seconds it went from words to suddenly he was on the floor and just blows and kicks being rained on him blood everywhere I still hear him like now I could hear this sort of screams and I was looking around as adults and no one was coming to help everyone was just ignoring us and I was just like normally I would be in we're in straight away and you know it's a punch-up it's a fight but you're like protecting your own but this happened so quickly it was so vicious it was it was just so violent that I froze I froze and when I think some people might have shouted at him or police might have been called and they ran off and he was on the floor and I just I really hate myself for not getting in there and not, and I've always felt, I mean, it was over 40 years ago and I, well, yeah, 40 years ago.

18:34And I feel even now just sad and angry that I didn't do enough to protect my friend. What happened to him was bad. The violence was bad. It was awful. It was disgusting, the racism and all of that. But it's the aftermath because he was broken after that. How can you be broken at 11 years old? I mean, what kind of society does that to someone who could had so much potential, so much joy in them, so much beauty in them that he would become a shadow of himself? We were all traumatized. We still carry that trauma now. He started dressing in black, shoplifted went from being the top of the class to the bottom of the class and it was just an awful awful awful experience you say that you are sad and angry at yourself and i am sad and angry that that happened to you and to him it must have felt so traumatizingly disempowering in multiple ways.

19:46When I think back at it now, I mean, we didn't think of it back then, but now what made it harder is we went back to school and we didn't really tell anyone about it. He got cleaned up, he went home, didn't see him back at school for a while. But it was just like our secret. I didn't tell my parents. I didn't tell the teachers. you just didn't have anyone to have an outlet to talk about things like that and i think even if we did people would have just said you know well that's how it is right now you know you shouldn't have gone there or try and stay out of trouble it was just an accepted part of life that as young kids you went through violence and you went through racial you had to deal with racial violence and And it's only now, decades later, that I'm trying to process what happened on that day.

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21:53One of the things that I discovered about you during the course of this research was that before you were a basketball player, you were a powerlifter. You've done your research. Wow, well done. Well done. But I wonder if you think that was related to this incident, because you were a powerlifter when you were 14, 15. Was there part of you that wanted to make yourself really strong? I've always wanted to make myself strong. I think my obsession wasn't with sport, it was with fitness. And the reason why I wanted to be fit and strong is because it meant that I was independent and it meant that I could protect myself.

22:34and it's only like in recent years that I've been able to analyze and look back. Being good at sport gave me that physical confidence because I was vulnerable. I walked around on calipers, so my balance wasn't great. I wasn't that quick, so I'm not going to get away. If it came to an argument or a dispute, I had to fight. I'm not going to run away from anyone. I'm not going to be able to escape from anyone. I have to stand up for myself. I couldn't hide people could see me I was one of the few black kids around I at the time I had a strong Nigerian accent and I walked with a physical limp so to be strong to be fit helped me and that was my first and foremost reason for why I got into sport.

23:23Is it true that you got into wheelchair basketball because someone spotted you in a Tesco shopping trolley being wheeled around by your friends. Very true yeah. Tell me that story. Yeah yeah that's um I so as I said I couldn't really get around that quickly um on my calipers and it was a time where there was shopping trolleys everywhere and we would just jump in shopping trolleys and we'd just race around the streets just having a great time and I'd be able to travel long distances with my mates without getting knackered. And there were two physiotherapists who were based in Canning Town and they worked at a school for kids with disabilities called Elizabeth Fry School.

24:06And they'd set up a sports group for kids with disabilities called the Newham Rollers. That was their basketball side of things. And they'd heard about me because I was in the local newspapers, the Newham Recorder. I'd done a sponsored walk over all the bridges and they wanted to get hold of me to play in their team, but they weren't quite sure how to. And it just so happened by total coincidence. They lived a couple of streets away from me and they'd been dropping some kids off from a basketball match in their van. And they saw me as I was being raced down the streets in the shopping trolley.

24:42It was Pragel Street. I was being raced down and they pulled up beside me in their bus looked out at me and I just saw these really weird looking people um I say weird because they just like they looked at the time is what people you'd class them as like hippies you know with like flowery shirts and long hair and all of that and they were pretty chilled and they looked out the window and said you're Addy aren't you and I was in shock that they knew my name I was like how do they know who I am and they said how would you like to swap that shopping trolley for a wheelchair and I told them to get out of it I was like what the hell there's no way I'm getting in a wheelchair because back then the perceptions of using a wheelchair were all really negative and I felt that I'd fought so hard to get my friends to respect me and like me but and to understand and to forget about my disability and now if I got into a wheelchair suddenly I'd be starting all over again.

25:40And not everyone would suddenly have this perception of me being slow and stupid. But luckily for me, they persisted and they spoke to my teachers, spoke to my parents, and it took four, five, six months. And they convinced me to go to Stoke Manville, where they were hosting the junior wheelchair games. And at Stoke Manville, one, when I went there, I was overwhelmed by meeting so many people with different disabilities. I went to a mainstream schools surrounded by non-disabled people. I'd never seen amputees, people with spina bifida, people with visual impairments, people with cerebral palsy.

26:12And it was like, mind blown. I was like, wow, look at all these people just trying to get my head around it. But it just so happened that weekend, the Great Britain men's wheelchair basketball team were training and everyone was really excited about it. It was like, oh, the men's team are playing. We've got to see these guys and I was like what's the big deal about wheelchair basketball and the men's team training and then I was taken to watch I went and just followed everyone and went to watch them training and immediately I was like oh my days these guys are incredible like I was expecting to see them in hospital wheelchairs rubbish looking wheelchairs I thought they were going to be pushed around but they were in state-of-the-art funky colored wheelchairs wheels were angled like this with a camber on them so they could spin around really quickly.

27:03They were flying up and down the court at pace. And I'm like, what, 12 at this time? And I remember one point there was this guy going down the court at pace. He's a double amputee, no legs. And he's about to go for a basket. And this guy takes him out. And you imagine this guy with no legs just flies out of this chair, like literally six, seven feet. some guy out with no legs flying out of the chair and rolling across the floor. I'm like, what the, this is nuts. And then the guy scrambles back into his chair, fist bumps. The other guy makes a layup shooting three point shots. And I'm like, look at these guys.

27:42Like they are more incredible than any of my non-disabled friends that I, that I know, you know? And I was like, suddenly at that moment I had this light bulb feeling. I was like, light bulb moment. I was like, this is my tribe. These are the people that I've been searching for all my life. No one's talking about their disabilities. Everyone's just talking about their excellence. And they were also not talking about being sportsmen, not talking about being good sportsmen for their borough or their country. They were talking about being the best in the world. I was just like, yeah. So you had found your tribe and your passion, but your parents couldn't understand it at that time.

28:29And you ended up leaving home at 17 and having a period of estrangement. Can you tell us what happened? yeah well i got selected to be in the great britain powerlifting team to go to the junior world championships in miami so when i was 15 i was british record holder i think i was lifting like twice my body weight i didn't weigh much i was really light so it wasn't that big a feat but anyway i was in i was selected in the team and i remember coming home super super proud and saying to my dad, you know, that I've been selected for the team. I'm going to get to go to Miami. I'd never been abroad, you know, since I'd come over from Nigeria, I'd never even been on a plane.

29:15And my dad said, no. He said, you've got your exams coming up. He said, it's Paralympic sports not going to get you anywhere. And he told me, no, you can't do it. And so that was devastating at 15 years old, you know, being selected for your country and thinking, you know, I'm going to go and compete with the best in the world. And then to be told that you can't do it. But prior to that, when I got my first wheelchair and I brought it home, my dad threw the wheelchair out the house and said that I wasn't allowed to bring the wheelchair in the house. They were, I mean, look, my parents were coming from this perspective.

29:54There was no Paralympic sports on the TV. There was no route for success as a person with a disability. And my dad would say to me, Ade, you are black, you are disabled. You have to work twice as hard if you want to succeed in this country. Stop wasting your time with these silly spots. That's what he would say to me. And he's like, focus on your education. My parents saw education as the route out of poverty, out of the route to success. not Paralympic sports I had to hide my basketball chair in the in in the garden under a piece of tarpaulin my next door neighbor took it through their house and lifted it over the fence and put it in our garden and I hid it under tarpaulin and then I used to sneak off to go to to to to play basketball and to train and then when I was told by my dad that I couldn't go to the world championships I was like in my mind I was like you know what I need a plan so I said to my parents university is not for me I want to be a Paralympian and I'm going to be a star and they just thought I was mad and so I sort of investigated how I was going to do this and I had a few friends who were living on their on their own who had disabilities as well and one of my mates Paul Pearson that said to me you know what you should write a letter to the council saying that your father's kicking you out of the house and forge his signature he said it might take a few months but you'll get a place So I wrote a letter pretending that was my dad's forged signature saying that he was kicking me out and all of that.

31:33I got a place. I didn't tell my parents and just left when I was, I'd just turned 17, left home without a word, moved into this council flat. The council were like so scared. They had a social worker come to see me every day. They were constantly watching me, making sure that I wasn't doing anything crazy. And that was it. I didn't speak to my parents or see my parents for the best part of 10 years. And the amazing part of this story is that after 10 years, your mother, I believe, saw you on TV at Sydney. as part of the Paralympic Great British team. And I don't know why I'm getting emotional, sorry, and called you and said, I can see you on television and your parents understood it.

32:24Yeah, before I'd got into the Paralympic team, I got selected for Sydney 2000 Games. I was sort of tentatively getting relationships back with my parents, talking to them a little bit here and there. And my mum, you know, who was absolutely heartbroken at me not being at home and leaving home she bought me a mobile phone she's literally thrust it in my hand like because I'd part I'd come and see them and then I'd leave because I didn't want to get into an argument with my dad or anything like that and she like went one day when I was leaving she thrust this phone into my hand and she said wherever you go please make sure you stay in contact because I'd also lived in Spain I moved to Spain for two years to play basketball professionally.

33:06So I was out of the country and moving all over the place. And so I kept the phone and I also said to them, look, you know, you might not see me for a while cause I'm going to be away. And I was going to the Paralympics, but I didn't think there was any reason to tell them that I'd been selected and I was going to the Paralympics cause they weren't into what I was doing. And then you're right at the Paralympic opening ceremony for the Sydney games, team Paralympics GB we get called out into the stadium 100 ,000 people or whatever it was 80 to 100 ,000 people just cheering and screaming as we're going around the track and then my phone rings and I'm like and I look at it and it's like mum do I answer this?

33:52and I was like I better answer it she'll be worried so I answered it and she was like you're in Australia? I'm like yeah I'm in Australia what are you doing in Australia I'm here for the Paralympics I know I can see you on the TV I can see you on the TV I said yeah I got selected for the Paralympics she's like and so yeah I sort of ended the conversation and then they watched me at the Paralympics watched our bronze medal game against the USA and when I got back I went to my parents' house, got a taxi home and my dad came out and he had tears streaming down his eyes and gave me a hug and then brought me in and my uncle was there and they had the Newham recorder and I was the Newham star features in the Paralympics some headline like that and I just remember my dad saying to my uncle, I always knew he would be successful, I always knew this one could do it What a story thank you so much for telling us that your second failure is when you were working in television so you make the transition from elite sport to tv presenting honestly it's just unfair that you're good at so many things and you climb a volcano for a bbc documentary in 2005 why is it a failure so the documentary was called beyond boundaries and the idea of the documentary was to send a group of us all with different disabilities to Nicaragua in Central America and to go from the Caribbean side to the Pacific side.

35:38And I was really searching for a challenge. I was on my way to leaving basketball, really in the direction of retiring and my mindset. And I wanted another challenge. I wanted something that would really, really push me. and I remember doing this and finding the first couple of stages quite easy. Like everyone else was like struggling and moaning and we, you know, I feel bad to say this, but I was like, I was loving it. You know, you're traveling through the Nicaraguan jungle. We had like howler monkeys screaming at us and, you know, picking mangoes from trees and setting up your tent in the middle of the jungles, the beautiful vista, wonderful wildlife.