title page for Unseen: My Journey

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Epub ISBN: 9781473530966

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BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,

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Copyright © Reggie Yates 2017

Reggie Yates has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published by BBC Books in 2017

www.penguin.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781785942785

For Anna Scher.

Thank you

INTRODUCTION

8am, summer 1992. The dull hum of cheap strip lights owning the silence struck fear into my pounding nine-year-old heart. An offensively floral-scented make-up artist edged closer. Between her colossal barnet and cherry red lipstick peeped a pair of piercing blue eyes that still haunt me to this day. Her brush powdered with brown make-up (a whole two shades too dark) finally connected with my face. Suddenly and officially, there was no turning back.

This was it. The minute Kieran Buckley and Aaron Burn found out, I wouldn’t be able to show my face on the football pitch ever again. The minute Uncle George, who took huge pleasure in referring to me as a thesssspian, found out, I’d never live it down. For the first time in my life, I was wearing make-up. I was officially a working actor.

When you think child actor, the first thing that comes to mind is a pre-pubescent millionaire divorcing their parents before riding the cocaine train to bankruptcy. For me, being a child actor was a social education. The people and challenges I experienced have helped to shape my career and to make me the man I am today.

Growing up in north London, I was consistently faced with the realities of class and wealth. Sandwiched between tourist-heavy, upwardly mobile Camden and rough-around-the-edges Hackney, Islington was the London borough I called home.

My mother always joked about the people living behind the huge panelled doors of perfect million-pound properties on our road. She’d laugh because they had no choice but to walk past our dirty council estate. Weirdly, for some reason I was never embarrassed or ashamed by the block.

As young as five while walking to school I remember being fascinated by the people and stories that existed as close as a few hundred yards from my own front door. Even at that age I was aware that, though they lived close by, they existed in an entirely different world.

image_missing Different is good and authenticity is invaluable image_missing

After escaping the unavoidable cloud of floral perfume during my first make-up chair experience, I found myself in the costume truck staring in awe at established cast members who were floating in and out, howling with laughter while throwing around dirty West Indian jokes. This was my bizarre but brilliant introduction to the world of TV.

I was to be sharing screen time with fictional characters my family had loved from the minute they burst onto British TV. My first gig was to play a tiny role on Channel 4’s longest-running sitcom at the time, Desmond’s.

Desmond’s was special. A sitcom about a black family who ran a successful business in Peckham, south-east London began its seventy-one-episode run in 1989. It wasn’t just special for me as a new actor and fan of the show; it was unique in TV full stop. The fact the show even existed was beyond a triumph, it was a miracle. This was the only long-running series on prime-time British TV with a cast made up almost exclusively of West Indian and African performers. The show was inclusive and at its core about family; more importantly, it was positive.

Any feelings of intimidation or nerves were quashed as I realised I was surrounded by men and women who looked and sounded like my family and the people I grew up around. Who they were off camera served as a huge driver for their on-screen personas, and what made them unique as people bolstered the show with a legitimacy and point of difference that was not only refreshing, but authentic.

Now at this point, we’re talking about me being a natty-haired, big-toothed, newbie child actor who wasn’t even in double figures yet. My mother had handcrafted my haircut with a pair of safety scissors complete with orange handles, and I’d probably eaten my body weight in make-up truck sherbet lemons. Age, bad haircut and sugar high aside, I quickly learned a valuable lesson.

Desmond’s resonated with all audiences not just because it was entertaining, but also because it was different. The black south-east London take on family life was a huge hit with mainstream audiences as it offered a voice unheard on a platform of that scale. From the calypso theme tune to the West Indian banter, and not forgetting those old African sayings, new eyes and ears were won over as the show delivered an exciting and fresh world for the majority.

Desmond’s was different and, for my perceptive younger self, the penny dropped. Different is good and authenticity is invaluable.

Television was never something I’d pined over; in fact performing wasn’t something I’d realised I was drawn to. Keeping myself entertained was always the motivation for my moments of showing off for friends, mum or anyone that would pay attention. If it wasn’t me filling the silence, it was music or TV and when it wasn’t my turn to talk I listened. Closely.

Obsessing over the words used by Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest saw pre-teen me desperately trying to understand why Bonita had an apple bum. I spent hours reciting raps I was far too young to understand, but listening to what my mother and her friends spoke about fascinated me on a whole other level.

Even as a child there was always something I found incredibly captivating about the fantastic hidden within the familiar. From the double meanings hurled bar after bar in the raps I immersed myself in, to eavesdropping on adult conversations heard through doors and walls, people and their truest experiences were the stories I gravitated toward.

The journey from actor to presenter in my teens saw the demands on me change radically. I’d learned early on that the best and most successful actors lose themselves within a character; they become someone else, forgoing the foundations of their own uniqueness and embodying whatever role they’ve been chosen to play. As a presenter, I was given direction and advice that was quite literally the polar opposite.

In 2012, I was fortunate enough to front my own radio documentary for BBC Radio 5 Live called Is Mum Enough? about growing up with a single parent. I spoke to friends, family and my role models, talking intimately about key moments in my life. It became a deeply personal and edifying experience, even though I had to venture into testing territory. The subject matter meant that I had to investigate my own role models, and in one part of the documentary I was on mic with a man I describe as my TV dad, Billy Macqueen.

I began working with Billy when I was twelve, during his time as an exec at Disney, and my first long-running presenting role was as one of a gang of child presenters fronting The Disney Club for ITV. It wasn’t even close to its American equivalent, The Mickey Mouse Club, where hosts would sing and dance and go on to huge careers in music and film, including alumni Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling and Britney Spears. Sadly, we couldn’t dance and were brilliantly British in our hooligan-like singing, so we stuck to just being kids on screen. Somehow, it worked. Billy wasn’t on set but occasionally came into the office or studio bringing his own brand of profanity and chaos, which I was instantly drawn to. Our relationship grew closer over the years as we worked together on several other projects, most notably the Sunday morning children’s entertainment series for the BBC called Smile.

You often see it written in leadership or self-help books that the culture of any company is built from the top down, and Billy’s brand of leadership was and still is incredible. Alongside long-term business partner Maddy Darrell – who directed and produced The Disney Club and now runs an award-winning production company with Billy – they created the type of environment that encouraged a style of presentation that played a huge role in my eventual fronting of documentaries.

TV was a different place at the time. There was a party for every occasion and a seemingly endless budget for cabs, treats, gifts and whatever we the cast wanted. In hindsight, I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like working with a pack of pre-teen children’s TV presenters. All horny, emotional, spotty and awkward, we must have been a nightmare. Between dousing myself with Lynx Africa deodorant and bathing in Oxy Clean spot cream, I somehow learned my lines and got the job done. To this day I’m not sure how, but I remember as clear as my now spot-free face the advice given by Billy.

His delivery was refreshingly honest and unmistakable. It was a style best described as a relentless machine gun, peppering people with assertions presented as jokes. Unfortunately, they were the kind that cut dangerously close to the bone. ‘Be you,’ he’d say, quickly followed by, ‘We’re paying you to be you so don’t fuck it up.’

Some of the folks in positions of power viewed us, the bright-eyed bushy-tailed newbies as a flock just waiting to be fleeced. Billy not only wanted us to win, but to do so being ourselves.

As a teenage presenter there seemed to be a strange reaction to what I brought to the table. With years of experience as an actor, I could switch my delivery tonally without really trying and would always embellish on scripts desperately trying to put Billy’s advice into practice.

However, outside of working with people like Billy, being me didn’t always go down so well. At the time, there was a desire by the industry for the crop of young BBC faces in which I now found myself a permanent fixture, to be … well, mayonnaise. Flavourless, colourless and devoid of any individuality. Even as a teenager, that made no sense to me.

At the age of fifteen, I was fronting bits for the BBC as a presenter but also performing as a cast regular in long-running children’s drama Grange Hill and in Channel Five’s soap Family Affairs. Acting still felt fun, but with my beak well and truly wet as a presenter, the desire to find work that allowed the personal stamp encouraged by Billy outweighed the opportunities to do so.

In any African home that enjoys television as a family, programme choice is usually placed firmly in the hands of the ranking family member. Growing up in a Ghanaian home right down to the doilies and fridge full of Tupperware, my stepfather reigned supreme over the remote control. That sought-after piece of kit invariably sat submissively on the arm of his favourite chair. For us kids, his dominance of the sole screen in the house usually worked against us, but occasionally he’d pick moments on the box that were brilliant.

It was at this point in my teens that the presenters I looked at with admiration shifted. I was drawn to those that no longer felt like hosts, but far more like versions of their true self only without the profanity … in some cases.

The unapologetically loud Chris Evans on Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush was the commander of every second committed to tape. Regardless of his shoulder-pad-heavy purple suits, somehow I felt that I knew who he was as a bloke. That connective sleight of hand was incredible to watch and inspiring.

Terry Christian on The Word, Davina McCall on Streetmate and even Jonathan Ross’s late-night persona all shared elements of getting the job done in the most traditional way. What made them special to me was their ability to find a moment to inject that little twinkle making the mundane come alive. The one thing all of these fantastic presenters had in common wasn’t their likeable personalities or cheeky tone; who they were on screen was fundamentally bound by the style of TV they were fronting.

It was at this stage that what I wanted to do hadn’t shown itself yet, but, in the shape of a terrible haircut and offensively loud bowling shirt, it was about to.

image_missing A horrible Hawaiian shirt image_missing

Entertainment has and will always be a slave to format, and so long as the idea is strong enough, every episode commissioned will feel and sometimes even look practically the same. This is never the case for documentary.

On one of the many nights at the mercy of my stepfather’s questionable TV taste, as a family we found ourselves watching BBC2. After a fluffy iteration of the channel’s distinctive numbered logo did a few back flips, something I’d never seen on screen unfolded.

A handheld camera followed a floppy, friendly young guy in a horrible Hawaiian shirt with huge glasses and bad hair. The sequence clearly wasn’t planned, polished or scripted but instantly we were silenced and glued to it. This was the first time I’d come into contact with the work of Louis Theroux and I was flummoxed. Up until this point, in my mind the man in front of camera was a certain type of alpha male, with a particular type of confidence and he never allowed anyone else to best him in a conversation.

That wasn’t what was at work on any episode of Weird Weekends. This was a young, likeable guy who happily threw himself into every situation, playing the fool, appearing naïve or allowing someone to laugh at his expense. His manner on screen served his intention to cut through the bullshit, arriving at the candid core of a subject’s outlook or belief system. I was in full fan boy mode instantly.

After just one episode of watching Theroux at work it became immediately clear to me that this was a lane I would kill to operate within. But given my fluffy list of credits and age this could never happen to someone like me. Right?

I’m a person who has been described as many things. Namely: meddlesome, snoopy, interfering, prying and, occasionally, ‘fucking nosy’. I prefer ‘interested in people’. The reason I feel the films I make even begin to resonate or trigger healthy conversation at dinner tables and in living rooms across the country is because I don’t put myself on the outside of a situation when the camera is on, I throw myself into it.

In some films I’ve immersed myself in the subject matter by living as the people I intend to understand. Sometimes the way to the core of an issue has been by opening up and sharing my own story with the people I meet. Learning from getting it wrong and making sure I keep in mind what was done when it felt right, I’ve finally begun to understand that who I am makes my films what they are.

As a black British man with a career spanning twenty-six years in the business, I can honestly say I’ve nearly walked away several times. As a minority in British TV you’re constantly made to feel odd in your outlook, because culturally you’re an abnormality, and by the numbers you’re an anomaly. Retaining a sense of self is sometimes tougher than the job itself. The feelings of not being understood or a desperation to be heard can breed resentment or, as in my case, a decline in self-belief.

Growing up a stone’s throw from wealth but surrounded by poverty as an experience was mirrored later in my life, but in an entirely different way.

In my early twenties I was working full time in TV and earning good money. For the first time I felt like the public knew my face. I had a popular show on national radio and was introducing the biggest international names weekly on the world’s longest-running music show, Top of the Pops.

I owned two London properties and was calm in my financial position and comfortable in my career. Without realising, I was a world apart from the friends I’d grown up with. Suddenly, the owners of those million-pound properties were my neighbours.

Conflicts of guilt, success and frustration started the rumblings of self-doubt. My progress may have been slowed as, finally, I was offered a role I never believed could come my way. Fronting a documentary was something I’d always wanted but up until now I’d been sure I was the last person an audience would take seriously leading any film of any weight or importance.

By this point I’d established myself as a presenter in the worlds of music and entertainment. The profile I’d achieved with the audience that had grown up with me from children’s TV made me the perfect young face to join a group of established personalities in Kenya. The project was an immersive documentary for charitable organisation Comic Relief and I was besides myself to be asked.

Upon returning home after living and working in the Kenyan slum of Kibera for seven days, I was faced with the typical and expected questions from friends, work colleagues and family. ‘How was it?’ and ‘how did you survive?’ were the openers, which garnered the stock response, ‘how long have you got?’.

This was my first time in this world. It wasn’t my show, my name wasn’t in the title, but it was the first time I was consistently being asked to be me. Completely. On this occasion I was neither presenter nor contributor, I was somewhere in between. As one of four ‘faces’ fronting the two-part special aiming to raise money for the slum, I was allocated my own self-shooting director. As both the director and cameraman, his job was to ask questions from behind the camera, but he also insisted on making eye contact below the viewfinder, going back and forth with me in conversation about what I thought, felt and was learning.

His name was Sam Wilkinson, and he’s a director I’ve subsequently been around the world with. We’ve since found ourselves in every situation imaginable, but this red dirt hillside in Kenya was where we first met. His pasty legs and short shorts left me with no option but to take the piss. It would have been rude not to. The geezer was wearing tight blue gym shorts with a yellow trim for god’s sakes. To make matters worse, he had on matching long socks and a T-shirt.

My inevitable anxiety due to our surroundings and my total ignorance as to what lay ahead was quickly killed as we laughed. A lot. I laughed at his outfits mostly, but instantly I was relaxed and something new started to happen on camera. This was the first time anyone had asked me deeply personal questions while rolling and, to begin with, I didn’t get it.

And yet, in conversation with Sam, I began to forget the camera was there. We were getting to the heart of a situation and allowing any frustration or anger I felt, motivated by the poverty or illness I was faced with, to show on screen. I’d never before had the opportunity to explore my reaction to very serious issues in this way. That, and having my director’s pale beanpole legs to laugh at in the toughest of moments, made for a totally new feeling. I had to do it again.

Crying on camera for the first time and allowing myself to open up about family, and my own journey in relation to the young men I was living with challenged me in a way I had never experienced in my personal life, let alone on camera. I saw myself in the people I met and was able to truly share how that made me feel.

This experience unlocked a desire to push for further challenges and opportunities to make factual TV. I was hungry for situations that could only lead to something positive for the millions watching at home. But when faced with the next opportunity to do so, my old friend self-doubt paid me a visit, and that bastard brought a suitcase determined to stay a while.

That opportunity came around a lot quicker than I could have imagined, in the shape of an offer to front a factual series unpacking autism through the prism of musical talent. It had been literally a matter of months since returning home fried and heartbroken after my time in Kibera. What I’d seen and experienced had taken a personal toll and I hadn’t quite worked out how to understand or make sense of my experience and subsequent feelings.

Having had enough time to find some level of normality after what was – as dramatic as it sounds – a life-altering trip, the idea of diving head first into another area I wasn’t familiar with just felt wrong.

Sat opposite the then-controller of BBC Three, Danny Cohen, I was adamant he didn’t know what he was on about. The film I had just made was telling an African story. I had felt connected to Kenya. As the child of Ghanaian immigrant parents I understood the concept of missed versus seized opportunity first-hand, just by looking at the journey of my grandparents and their desire to make a better life for themselves and their children. But now, as a follow-up, he wanted me to explore autism?

Autism was a word I didn’t even know how to spell. I’d had no connection with the condition, no first-hand experience of it and saw the series as nothing more than an opportunity to get it wrong publicly. How could I front a factual series on a subject I knew nothing about?

Yep, self-doubt had really made himself at home. With my monologue as to why the experienced channel controller knew absolutely nothing finished and out of the way, I finally shut up to hear the most simple and silence-inducing response; one I’ll never forget. ‘That is exactly why you’re perfect to do this film.’

His point was that the reality of living with autism is something families around the world deal with quietly and behind closed doors. Simply put, if you’re not affected by it, you’ll never truly know about it. With that being the case, me fronting the film would instantly make me fresh eyes to the condition and a mouthpiece for the audience.

He knows his onions that Cohen bloke. There really isn’t a lot you can say to that level of clarity, so applying that perspective to my role, the conundrum of host, reporter, journalist or presenter all went out of the window, and I placed all my chips on attacking any subject matter as myself. This felt incredibly exposing yet freeing at the same time.

It was 2010 and my career was about to make a huge shift I hadn’t seen coming. The best thing about this moment was none of it had been planned. I was about to start a whole new stage of my career but had no idea what it would entail.

The series on autism saw me experience the realities of living with the condition while preparing the contributors for a musical performance with a live band in front of a studio audience. The series was a challenge, but the fact I was learning about both myself and the condition on screen caused the industry and the audience to take notice.

As a result, in 2011 I was nominated for my first Royal Television Society award in the category Best Presenter. It was a huge wake-up call. I’d pushed myself and been rewarded for it. For the record, when I say rewarded I mean nominated. I got me suit, went to the big night and watched Professor Brian Cox walk away with the award. Thankfully my ‘It’s fine, it’s fine, he’s great isn’t he’ face had been well rehearsed, so I was smiling while crying inside, but no one knew.

Off the back of the exceptionally well-received documentary on autism, another series presented itself pushing me in a direction that I, at the time, believed I would now be more than prepared for. How wrong I was. That series was Tourettes: Let Me Entertain You.

The first two films were straight documentaries (much like the autism series), exploring the realities of the condition while preparing the singers to perform with a live band in front of a studio audience. The series culminated in a final episode where the now trained singers, all sufferers of the condition, made it on stage and performed.

In shooting the factual episodes with my director Sam (minus the short shorts), I got to know the cast, their families and see first-hand the challenges Tourette’s inflicted on their daily lives. On some level, the word ‘challenges’ doesn’t even begin to explain the reality of what I became frequent witness to. For some of the parents, the stresses of medicating their children into a state of numbness left them with no choice but to go without the relief offered by the drugs.

The unfortunate result would be a constant stream of physical or verbal ticks causing all manner of social and educational challenges for the child they were desperately trying to protect. This real-life predicament stirred up all manner of emotions within me, while I desperately tried to retain a level of impartiality. Throughout filming, the encouragement I received from Sam – who was once again on directorial duties – was to engage and verbalise those feelings no matter how uncomfortable displaying my frustrations on camera might feel.

Initially, the idea of behaving this way on camera didn’t sit well with me, as my history and training had been to not only deliver someone else’s scripted speeches – albeit personalised ones – but to remain in control at all times while sticking to the script. Room for emotion or the requirement to connect with a subject matter wasn’t ever discussed in the years spent as a regular face on mainstream entertainment, or during the thousands of hours fronting live children’s TV.

This was me finally understanding the role Danny Cohen had twisted my arm to originally fill. This was me for the first time, speaking on behalf of the people just like me sat at home watching, and truly becoming a mouthpiece for my audience in all of its shouty, questioning, inquisitive glory.

In making this series, for the first time I truly found myself fully unaware of the camera falling into a position of protector toward contributor Ruth. To be clear, as a fully independent and socially active woman, Ruth has and will never need protecting, but due to some of the reactions she was getting while shooting in public I went on to totally forget myself. Ruth, to this day stands as one of the most interesting people I’ve met due to her incredible lust for life, regardless of her impediment.

Living with severe motor and physical tics, Ruth was unable to contain sudden movements of her arms and sometimes legs as well, while the verbal element of the condition showed itself by triggering her to scream the offensive or inappropriate. Sam and I met Ruth in Camden Town to go shopping and walk the famous market while getting to know each other, but the pressure of the camera unavoidably sent her tics into overdrive.

As teenagers flocked upon the camera’s arrival, Ruth’s tics received the predictable reaction of laughter and ridicule. As a response, I jumped to her unwanted defence. I hissed and snapped at the sweaty teens, calling for sensitivity and respect, much to Ruth’s amusement. This was the typical reception she receives on a normal day out and, on her part at least, heartbreakingly expected.

Much to Sam’s pleasure, the skirmish unfolded on camera, causing me to confront my reaction to Ruth’s reality. It was in that moment that I had no option but to stare directly into the barrel of the unavoidable. This wasn’t just the contributor opening up about their life and the stories behind their behaviour. These films were grounded in my own process of self-evaluation and discovery, leading to a level of understanding gained through the eyes of their experiences. By discussing the issue at hand in the most genuine and immediate way possible, I was learning on screen with my audience.

Sam smiled that massive cat-got-the-cream smile directors only pull when they know they’ve shot a moment that won’t end up on the cutting room floor. He smiled that director grin not just because the film suddenly came alive, but because he knew I was hooked.

Earning incredible reviews and praise, the Tourette’s series opened the door to further explore a new lane in factual programming as, finally, I had begun to believe what I’d been told years prior by the channel controller. My role had in one series jumped from being primarily about presenting to unexpectedly being much more about letting go.

When I was first offered the opportunity to make documentaries, I was initially convinced my point of view as a young black working-class man with a history in music, drama, children’s TV and entertainment would not make my films remotely credible. But through the understanding gained from conflict and challenges on screen, the very things once seen as a weakness would become my strength on camera, as I represented the eyes of the everyman and voice of the audience.

Sat opposite several production companies, the meetings all opened with versions of the same question. ‘What is it you’d like to do next?’ By shedding everything I’d learned as a TV host, and opening up to a new relationship with the camera, contributors, content and – most importantly – the audience, the next step had begun to show itself.

With the challenges of the Tourette’s and autism series still fresh in my mind, I knew that bringing my own history and relationships to any subject matter could only make for something the viewer could relate to. In my limited history with the documentary genre, I’d already experienced a myriad of people and situations to last a lifetime all causing me to challenge my own convictions and, at times, restraint.

With a newfound confidence in my journey and the value of my honest perspective, learning with the audience on camera became a priority. Finding a personal connection to a subject matter, which could then lead to the scab of any issue being picked in the most balanced way possible, was my motivation to push for a project that would allow me to immerse myself in surroundings I was very keen to explore.

It was 2013 and I decided to put out a very clear message in every meeting I went to. My focus and sights were placed firmly on the continent that not only is referred to as home by my mother and father, but is the home of so many unanswered questions. A few months later, my journey as a factual filmmaker would truly begin when BBC Three commissioned the series Reggie Yates: Extreme South Africa.

CHAPTER 1

HOPE FOR HIRE

religion

rıˈlıdʒ(ə)n

noun: religion

The belief in a god or gods and the activities that are connected with this belief, such as praying or worshipping in a building such as church or temple.

In my limited experience, the recently religious can shift the dynamic of a solid relationship by pulling every chat into a conversational cul-de-sac using variations of the following: ‘And that’s why you need to give yourself to Christ bro’.

image_missing Dude, my car broke down, my dog just died and I’m pretty sure this bump is a corn on my little toe.’ ‘Well if I were you, I’d give myself to Christ bro. image_missing

To be clear, I’m not saying I have anything against religious people. What I am saying is ten-a-penny preachers have a particular talent for getting under my skin.

I have a strange and long relationship with faith and organised religion as, like many people, worship was introduced into my life and quickly normalised as a child. I say normalised, but I still remember being no more than seven and totally fascinated by the idea of holy water. I struggled to understand why I was the only person who found it kind of strange that tap water waved over by a pastor now held spiritual value.

My north London start wasn’t that dissimilar to my classmates. It was working class, Arsenal supporting and driven by a hunger for a better quality of life. This was, of course, while I was at school. At home, life was very different.

Behind the yellow door on the second floor, 17 Birkenhead House was a West African bubble. What we ate, the language used and, more importantly, how we prayed was all Ghana. In this way, the home I grew up in was very different to that of my classmates; in our house a perfectly blurred line connected culture and religion. Church was what we did as a family. Some families went bowling, some flew kites – we, on the other hand, would go to church on a Sunday morning and leave at dinnertime.

We were Pentecostal Christians who attended all-day church and I had the squeaky cheap church shoes to prove it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the Ghanaian Pentecostal church we attended ran long, but it was anything but boring. West Africans as a whole aren’t known for our timid nature or delicate patter, so with our church made up almost entirely of new-to-the-country men and women, worship was always carried out just as it was back home. Loudly.

My first visit is still clear as day. Walking into the packed and makeshift place of praise was an assault on the senses. The overpowering smell of anointing oil filled my nose. My shiny church shoes squeezed my toes while a live band accompanying the wails of prayer filled my ears. With clear direction by the all-powerful pastor, the jammed room swayed, waved white hankies and stamped the ground in unison in an effort to push satan further down.

As the room reached fever pitch, headwrap-wearing aunties head to toe in their now sweaty finest begun to hit the ground one by one. The Holy Ghost had struck and possession coupled with loud speaking in tongues filled the room. My first experience of ‘the Spirit’ was when it chose to take Aunty Linda. Now Aunty Linda wasn’t the smallest in voice or stature, so when the spirit took her, it also took her plastic chair with a loud snap. With broken seat pieces either side of her convulsing body, Aunty Linda was possessed and the whole church knew about it.

To go from this unapologetic world of Pentecostal worship as a kid, to being steered exclusively by the values of Islam in my early teens was a culture shock and huge left turn.

The short version of the story is my mother got remarried to a Muslim man when I was eleven and, as a household, we became Muslim overnight. The sausages, bottles of Baby Cham and deli paté suddenly vanished from the fridge as a whole new set of rules quickly established themselves, changing my relationship with god again.

Who was this new god and why didn’t he speak English? Pray how many times a day? Wear what on a Friday? Confusion doesn’t even begin to describe my tiny mind exploding with the information overload. Unsurprisingly, this led me to a change of lane. The moment I moved out at eighteen, I decided that religion in whatever form it might take would be something I’d give myself to when, and only if, it felt right.

With my big sister becoming a born-again Christian and younger siblings identifying as Muslim, you could say I’m the raggedy, godless black sheep of the family. Having this title hanging like an unusually dark cloud above my head, my connection with faith or lack thereof had always niggled away at me.

For my Muslim mother, me finding my path spiritually and embracing a faith (preferably hers of course) has consistently been the unspoken want bubbling beneath the surface. Funnily enough, my own desire to connect with something bigger than me had been increasingly taking up more and more of my headspace, when the opportunity to look at religion in South Africa landed in my lap.

Was this chance to explore faith and religion on screen fate, or the lord working in mysterious ways? I was game either way as a very personal set of questions could potentially find an answer in a professional opportunity. Stars aligned, or, as my big sister would say, ‘Look at God’.

It’s rare to be challenged on the fundamentals of what makes you who you are spiritually, let alone on camera. So making the Millionaire Preacher film for the Extreme South Africa series was a baptism of fire. Pun most definitely intended.

Given my religious history and minimal connection to any organised religion, I was apprehensive but willing to explore religious themes on screen. This would be the first time in my career I’d be openly speaking about faith, Christianity, Islam and everything in between. The sensitivities associated were endless, as this project could only truly connect with the audience successfully if I were to totally give myself to the process. The only way this film could actually come close to its true potential was by me not only discussing what I encountered on camera, but also speaking openly about my own history and connection to the theme.

At this stage of my career in factual filmmaking I was green. This was the first series of the ‘Extreme’ strand and I felt the weight of responsibility in terms of getting the series right. I was in Africa, I was fronting the first series with my name in the title and I couldn’t fuck it up. In hindsight, there is without doubt so much that could have been done differently and an endless stream of lessons learned from the mistakes I feel I made on screen.

This would be my first time in South Africa. Unfortunately, I didn’t step off the flight anywhere near as objective as I’d have liked. I was quietly riddled with preconceptions of a divided country still weighed down by post-Apartheid hang-ups. I was convinced this would overshadow my experience, but then my race-related fears lost all importance as I was instantly confronted with a whole other juggernaut.

After the obligatory post-flight rest day, I was chomping at the bit to get out and shoot. The first sequence scheduled to film seemed, on face value, simple. My director Sam had called for a walk through the town centre, which confused me, as I was unsure as to what a walk and observe on camera would deliver. I quickly found out exactly what Sam was after.

Every street was filled with the sound of worship as various churches pumped their message out into the busy street via huge speakers. With statements as names, churches in Johannesburg aren’t shy in declaring their importance. Names like Christ The Solution, With God Anything Is Possible and Amen Tabernacle made clear how seriously they took themselves.

With a different church every few hundred yards, lunchtime prayer was so popular I found the huge congregations of the more successful pastors literally spilling into the street. My stroll quickly became an education on the scale of South African faith as hundreds of people stood silently praying on the pavement via PA system. Desperate to take it all in and somehow understand, this inside/outside service became increasingly unusual to my virgin eyes. Suited business types and mums with kids skipped between the crowds without even batting an eyelid. Here, this was normal.

As I continued my amble, now open-mouthed, every street offered its own church and speaker system sharing with passing pedestrians and traffic a new relentless and shouted sermon. With a different international Ministry of this or God’s Chosen Place of that on every corner, picking one tailormade for you wouldn’t be that difficult a task, considering every kind of Evangelical pastor imaginable had their own building big or small and a following to match.

What struck me instantly was something I hadn’t considered. The live band, the type of people worshipping, and most importantly the message and its delivery, weren’t that dissimilar to the church I once attended with my own family in London.

At the time we made the documentary, South Africa had more people living with HIV than anywhere else in the world, while 70 per cent of young people in the country were unemployed. The need for something to believe in and an insatiable appetite for miracles wasn’t only understandable, it made sense.

image_missing Touch the screen and receive your miracle image_missing

The intention of the episode was to unpack faith in young South Africans through the mega church Incredible Happenings and its incredibly popular pastor. Not only was its congregation well into the tens of thousands, it was almost exclusively made up of township people, some of whom had travelled for days to attend and receive their blessing. Its gregarious leader and undeniable force of nature, self-proclaimed Prophet Mboro was a man I had so many questions for.

This multi-millionaire holy man is known to own seven houses, have over thirty cars and wear only the most expensive suits. Hitting the headlines continuously for the wildest of religious claims or practices, Mboro is a regular on the front page of every Johannesburg tabloid.

Shortly before my trip, the prophet was not only connected to a zombie resurrection but accused of waving a gun around at a radio station. At the time of writing this chapter, Mboro was making international news for selling photos he took on his smartphone while in heaven, for 5,000 rand. The man is a true one-off.

Proud of and continuously flaunting his wealth, Mboro dressed, lived and was treated like a rock star. Somehow his lifestyle and behaviour didn’t raise an eyebrow in his congregation and I needed to know why.

Seeing first-hand the number of people coming through the door every Sunday to hear Mboro speak, I can’t stress enough just how popular the man is. He has a daily TV show and a daily radio show with over 200,000 listeners – for him, its simply outreach. The live call-ins both on TV and radio produced some of the more surprising ideas on how to heal. Touching the screen or the speaker was a regular instruction, and for every one person who fobbed it off as ridiculous, two would turn up at Incredible Happenings the following Sunday.

A huge number of his parishioners are young, so my earliest confusion was how? For the smartphone-tapping, pop culture-consuming millennials, what was it about his message that resonated, and why didn’t they see the same things I did? I was dealing not just with a religious leader, Prophet Mboro was a celebrity.

image_missing Bad criticism I’m happy for that, they made me famous image_missing

In the churches I’d attended as a child, the pastors didn’t have time for kids; they were far too busy sweating at the podium speaking in tongues. I’d never met a religious leader who not only had the love and adoration of thousands but a congregation who all felt they had a personal relationship with the man.

On my way in, I met a group of young choir members in the car park all buzzing and excited for the service that was about to begin. Their enthusiasm was infectious and driven by their love for the prophet and his powers. One of the group claimed to have been healed by Mboro in a service weeks before. Apparently she couldn’t walk, and with his healing hands, she now could. With the prophet proudly admitting that criticism made him famous, my plan was to observe and judge the man only on what I saw and nothing else. But based on what I’d just heard, I knew that would be difficult.

After the conversation, Sam and I took a break in the car park. He smoked; I fiddled with the car stereo. It’s at this stage I should probably come clean about my poker face. Bear with me. My ability to hide my true feelings in situations this foreign is at best minimal, which is probably why my inner cynic took control of all facial expressions and I had no say in the matter.

With the inevitable bad jokes out of the way, how to manage the following service without spending the entire time taking the piss was a genuine concern. I’d just spoken to someone who believed the prophet had granted her the ability to walk! There was too high a chance of more unreal shenanigans ahead for me not to be concerned that the film could descend into a piss-taking ignorance safari.

Being snarky or know-it-all has never been a motivation for any of my work, as that role is well covered by many other filmmakers. So how would I navigate this shoot day while being respectful regardless of the constant stream of crazy? At this point, I had no idea.

Opposite the main hall was a small store selling Mboro merchandise. T-shirts with the prophet’s face on colourful logos filled the stands, while a queue to pay went on for miles. Parishioners waited quietly holding onto their blessed items, proud to own something bearing the man’s likeness, and it was this that slowly started to pull the humour from the situation. I was beginning to see for myself the scale of influence and, more importantly, the scale of belief.

These blessed Mboro branded items included everything from water and salt to sanitary towels. Men were buying menstrual pads as well as the women due to their apparent powers to heal aches and pains anywhere on the body. How much belief did this huge congregation actually have in their chosen prophet, and how far could that go? I was about to find out.

When Mboro arrived in the church his entrance was flanked by a team of burly security guards all holding automatic weapons. I’m not going to pretend I knew what kind they were carrying; the detail I ask you to focus on here is that they were holding firearms. Big ones. The loaded kind that need two hands to hold.

A standing ovation met his entrance as the thousands in attendance reached new heights of excitement amid his presence. This was real rock star stuff, and the minute he hit the stage everything changed. Jumping, screaming and performing, songs and jokes fell from his mouth effortlessly. In no time at all, everyone was in the palm of his manicured hand.

With cheers followed by laughter broken up by songs, a clear rhythm was established. The room was enthralled and entertained. The sick came forward and the prophet stepped up to heal all ailments, be they physical, mental or spiritual.

As a non-believer not wanting to pray, my awkwardness was clear and the prophet was on it straight away. As a man not practising any religion, faking prayer felt like the height of disrespect. But with my seat in the front row giving me literally nowhere to hide, I was rumbled and firmly on the prophet’s radar for all the wrong reasons. At this stage I hasten to add, we hadn’t even spoken yet.

Screaming women and crying men lined up in their hundreds, spinning a noticeable shift in mood. The band dropped their level, the prophet changed his tone and one by one he worked his way through the long queue of believers. The singing, live band and prayer hadn’t felt a million miles away from some of the things I’d seen or experienced in my old church back in London. But that was until the prophet began to heal.

A twenty-two-year-old woman stepped up to complain on mic of a painful vagina. She spoke of a recent failed suicide attempt due to the decline in all areas of her life as she believed she’d been raped by a spiritual beast. The prophet attempted to tend to her vaginal pain by pushing down on her genitalia with a pointed patent shoe while speaking in tongues.

During his on-stage and on-mic healing in front of the entire congregation, he referred to spiritual husbands and possessed vaginas. Any humour to be found in the situation had left the room. I’d never seen anything like this and, given the fact that any scepticism in this hall of thousands was limited to my chair alone, I knew that the next week might have one or two conflicts of opinion.

After a seven-hour service, the collection began. Huge pink boxes were filled with sealed envelopes as people waited in line to give what they could. In a room of this size and with so many happy to wait, I’d never seen this many people willingly give up money, especially money they didn’t have to give. With a million pounds a year earned via donations and purchase of merchandise, Incredible Happenings was big business, and I was about to meet the CEO.

Post-service I was granted an audience with Mboro. I was made to wait a short while before he emerged from a back room flanked by armed guards. Standing at no more than 5'2" in his patent Cuban heels, he schooled me on possession, witchcraft and talking cats during a crash course on what I’d just witnessed during his healing session.

The prophet could smell the sceptic on me and looked me square in the eye while letting me know that, here, things are different. He made it very clear that, in Africa, people have faith and that African faith is placed in different things from the faith in my Western world.

His tone was staunch but inclusive, warm but firm. This was a man who knew how to work the camera while letting me know exactly who was in charge.

My intention to carry myself with a consistency in demeanour, tone and respect has served me well throughout my career. The first meeting with anyone – be they punter, pop star or politician – is always important. With that being said, I had a feeling I hadn’t won over the prophet just yet.

The following day I found myself invited to join the prophet on a shopping trip. But after waiting for over three hours, it finally dawned on me. Culturally, the longer you’re willing to, or in my case made to, wait for somebody, the more important they are. Sat twiddling my thumbs, I knew that Mboro was making sure I was aware of just how important he was.