The five members of the Cameroon Olympic boxing team, who failed to turn up for their plane home after being knocked out of London 2012, turned up at a small boxing gym in New Cross.
Thomas Essomba (L) of Cameroon takes on Paddy Barnes of Ireland during their Light-Flyweight (49kg) match at the London 2012 Olympic Games
West African Olympic boxers who went missing in Britain after the games have been discovered in a South London gym.
Five members of the Cameroon Olympic boxing team failed to turn up for their plane home after being knocked out of London 2012.
It was feared they were keeping a low profile in the UK in a bid to secure permanent asylum once their Olympic accreditation had expired.
But unable to resist the pull of the punchbags, skipping ropes and medicine balls, the fitness fanatics blew their cover by turning up at a boxing gym in New Cross, South London.
Christian Donfack Adjoufack, 26, Thomas Essomba, 24, Yhyacinthe Mewoli Abdon, 26, Serge Ambomo, 26 and Blaise Yepmou Menouo asked if they could have session at the club with head coach Patrick Harris.
Assistant coach at the gym, Jim Addis, said he and fellow boxers were stunned when the Cameroon competitors turned up at the small side street club.
He said: “We were all gobsmacked when they turned up.
“We were even more dumbfounded when we realised who they were as we know they’d gone missing after being eliminated from the games.
“They knew of Patrick and asked especially for him.
“They all took part in sparring sessions and it was one of the best we’ve ever had.”
Mr Addis said as news spread of the team’s appearance more club regulars came along to see them.
He said: “It was amazing. The gym was packed and the atmosphere was super, it was one of the best nights we’ve had.
“It was a great honour to have them train in the gym, we were all over the moon. They have promised to come back for more training.
“It’s been great for the club and we couldn’t be more honoured.”
Mr Addis said the five fighters told him where they were staying in London but would not reveal their addresses.
Under the Olympic accreditation rules the boxers are free to stay in the UK until November but they will have to apply for permission to remain in the country after that.
Mr Addis said the fighters were planning on applying for permanent residence.
He said: “They told me they wanted to stay here and were very keen to come back to the club.
“We all want to help them as much as we can and understand they will be applying to stay here.”
Faced with British TV’s indifference to black shows, young writers and directors are taking their talents to the web to find an audience. Bim Adewunmi talks to some of them
HBO’s recent comedy drama Girls, created and co-written by indie wunderkind Lena Dunham, has been the subject of a seemingly endless stream of think pieces. The crux of the matter is the diversity – or lack thereof – that the show displays. A full cast list from Imdb.com showed parts for non-white cast members such as “Jamaican Nanny”, “Young Black Guy”, “Roosevelt Hotel Bellhop” and “Tibetan Nanny”. Of course, Girls is only the latest in a long line of New York-set TV shows that paint a distinctly monochromatic picture. From Seinfeld to Sex and the City to Friends (which recycled the same storyline for two black characters over the series), there is a small-screen tradition of whitewashing the big city.
British TV is not doing much better. The last sitcom with a majority black cast was the Ian Pattison-scripted and almost universally panned The Crouches in 2003. Before that, it was Desmond’s, which ended in 1994, but now thankfully lives on on Channel 4oD. The big breakout successes with majority black casts have been in the genre of gritty “urban realism”, usually focusing on inner-city London, crime and drug deals. The success of one such programme, Channel 4’s Top Boy, has seen it recommissioned for a second series.
British actor and comedian Angie Le Mar recently said: “We decided to make [new sitcom The Ryan Sisters] ourselves and put it up online because we just can’t get TV networks interested. There really is a lot of racism in the industry: they’re not ready for black women. Commissioners say: ‘Can you make white people laugh?’ Or: ‘Middle England won’t like you.'” Her sentiments were echoed by David Harewood, last seen in the US TV drama, Homeland, who said there “aren’t that many roles for authoritative, strong, black characters in this country”. Whether the fault lies with commissioners or writers, the fact remains that the spectrum of blackness on TV is narrow, and has remained almost stagnant in the last decade or so. Where, therefore, are the newest generation turning in order to see a broader representation of themselves? The internet, of course.
The success of the American series The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl, which debuted on YouTube in February last year, was unprecedented. Series creator Issa Rae, a 26-year-old Stanford graduate, wrote the title character after reading an article asking “where the Black Liz Lemon [the awkward TV writer played by Tina Fey on 30 Rock] was. And I was like: ‘I need to do this now before it’s too late,'” she says. Since the show started, its episodes have been viewed more than 6m times and it has more than 61,000 fans on Facebook. When the producers ran out of money mid-season, they started a fundraising drive – contributions from fans came flooding in, eventually raising more than $56,000. The ABG (as it’s known to its fans) brand has even spread to retail – you can buy t-shirts, wristbands and decals from their online shop.
The success of ABG has opened the floodgates for minority film-makers. Web series such as The Number, The Couple, and The Unwritten Ruleshave popped up in the last year; written, produced and starring black and non-white actors in roles less restrictive than mainstream TV often allows. With a host of new black dramas, the British are catching up too.
Brothers With No Game
The Brothers With No Game is a blog written anonymously by four twenty-something friends from London. It follows four men as they traverse London life, relationships and jobs. Their web series debuted on 11 June. For them, writing the show as a web series was an obvious choice. “We started with the blog in October 2010 and have had an amazing response; more than half a million hits. We began thinking it would work well as a series and decided on an online sitcom. With an online medium, we can do things our own way,” says Justin Credible (one of the creators’ nicknames).
The “Brothers” are in their mid-20s (25 to 27) and are all of British African descent. They all came from non-TV backgrounds: how much of a challenge was that? “From a writing perspective, it wasn’t anything too new, although it’s a scripted format. One of us is hoping to become a scriptwriter, so this is kind of their niche,” he says. “We’ve been fortunate enough to have a producer who had produced a couple of online things, and he gave us the benefit of his experience. But we don’t have a huge production company behind us.” Funding the show has also proved challenging: “We have to fund everything ourselves – we’ve had to be creative with what we have in order to make it work. But people have seen what we’re trying to do and have asked to join in.” They’ve read the blog and enjoyed it and they want to be a part of it.” BWNG are planning a Crowdfunder campaign (the UK equivalent of Kickstarter) in the future, from which they will pay the actors and production costs.
A casting call brought in 80 actors, something Credible describes as “an amazing response. It was obviously something that they thought would do well, and it shows how people want to get into meatier roles that are a bit different.” On the subject of blackness on television, Credible says: “I don’t think we’re given a chance to really showcase what we’re all about in terms of the black British population. I mean, Top Boy and My Murder are brilliant TV and really engaging viewers but I think there’s also space for dramas and sitcoms and thrillers.” He continues: “Variety is the key message here. There’s a narrow representation of what it means to be black; there need to be different stories told.” The rise in web series by black creators is a direct response, he says. “It’s why we’re taking things into our own hands. If it’s not going to be on TV, at least we’ll be online – it’ll be interesting to see how it impacts television.”
Venus vs Mars
Baby Isako’s dream was to write her sitcom, Venus vs Mars, for TV. But, she tells me, it’s no easy thing: “To get a whole black cast put on TV is really hard work, a long process,” she says. “I felt it was something that needed to be done now, straight away. The urban audience in the UK market is really growing, so I thought: ‘Let’s do the series, make TV come to us and not the other way round.'” For Isako, 24, the web was attractive for other reasons – an instant worldwide audience. “We get people watching it from America, Europe, everywhere. It just shows how powerful the web actually is.” The success of ABG has spurred her on. “I feel like we in the UK look up to the Americans and how they do things,” she says. “Hearing that shows like that can actually be successful; you get inspired to take the risk yourself.” One of the risks she’s taking is the funding of the show: “I’m lucky enough to have an up-and-coming production company, Purple Geko, who came on board as part of Talented and Young,” she says. “They’ve got all of their equipment and they do all the editing and the additional costs are funded by them.” The show features actors she’s previously worked with in theatre, but they also held an open casting call. “Some people are naturally gifted,” Isako acknowledges.
The show will have an initial run of six episodes, to give it a chance to bed in and gauge the response. “We’ll see if there are any channels interested in picking it up, or if there’s funding that we can get to continue being an online series,” she says. Ultimately, though, Isako wants mainstream success: “I would like it to go to national television. But if that doesn’t happen, then we’re happy with it being online.”
She describes the series as a “light-hearted romantic comedy”; the star of the show, Venus, takes us on her quest through the dating wastelands to find Mr Perfect. It’s a genre she feels is not seen as the natural home for actors of colour: “I don’t like the representations of ‘blackness’ on British TV. For me, as a young black female, I cannot turn on the TV and find a character I can relate to, that I can identify with,” she says. “Every time, they’re the girlfriend, the drug-related/gang/estate role. I’m not surrounded by people like that so I can’t watch those shows and relate. That’s why I became a writer, to write different roles. We want to show that there’s an audience for this type of series, it’s different to what’s on TV.” Series such as Isako’s will help to combat this mentality. “I think we need a lot more black and minority ethnic writers coming up and taking risks. If you want something to be changed you have to work. Who’s writing these shows? Top Boy was written by a white writer! There’s a stereotypical idea – ‘this is what black people are like’ – and it’s not true.”
All About The McKenzies
For Samuell Benta, 25, getting All About The McKenzies up and running has taken two years. He originally conceived the idea as a traditional TV sitcom. “Flicking through channels, I was just seeing American stuff. In the US, there’s an abundance of black shows, but in the UK, we’ve got little to nothing – and in what we do have, we’re negatively represented.” He did his research, he says. “Desmond’s, The Real McCoy, all of that. I saw the most recent was The Crouches and thought, “why didn’t that work?” and went from there. There’s a difference between the US and Britain – it’s not the talent; it’s the creative idea behind it, the direction. I think over here they water our stories down, just to suit what they think the audience wants.”
He filmed a speculative 22-minute pilot for TV last April, but the footage was unusable: “The camera angles were awful, the cameraman hadn’t filmed everything he was supposed to,” says Benta. For seven-and-a-half months, Benta floundered. But attending the Hollywood black film festival in Los Angeles, “I discovered the web stuff going on out there. I thought, ‘if there’s a way this can be done for free, why am I asking around for all this money?'”
By January this year, he had rewritten it for the web and filmed it over five days in February. The series is about three generations of a family, the McKenzies – complete with a wisecracking grandad, a CID detective father and a teenage boy obsessed with being cool. It also stars Benta, who plays a version of himself – a single dad who wants to spend more time with his daughter. In April, he attended a web festival in America where the series won an award for best ensemble cast in a comedy – the sole British winner. Benta is not new to the camera – he has played a part in EastEnders: E20 and a generation of kids will remember him as Will Aston, the Black Ranger in Power Rangers Operation Overdrive.
“I wasn’t supposed to be the director, or the only writer, and I was looking for a producer, but circumstances meant I had to take on the whole project myself,” he says. The first season of eight five-minute episodes was financed by him alone. “All the actors did it for free. And so did the cameraman, editor, and the graphics people. I have a good relationship with the head teacher of the school in the show, which allowed me to use the school for one day and the students were extras. Making the series allowed him to make use of newly acquired skills. “I run a service where I write and direct actors’ demo reels, so I learned to direct from that. But I also learned by being on set and watching directors – I used to shadow directors on Eastenders. And luckily, all that happened within the period of my stuff getting stolen so I built up that experience.”
Benta has had interest from a couple of entertainment companies and is weighing options. “There’s interest now – people want meetings – so clearly I’ve got something. But I’m a first-time producer, and it’s got to the stage where I need to educate myself on the business side of things.” What does the future hold for the McKenzies? Benta is happy – for now. “The original idea was not for the web. My intention is still for it to be a TV series.”
Notting Hill Carnival, Europe’s biggest street festival was attended by hundreds of thousands of people dressed in bright, colourful and outrageous costumes. Below are photos from the 2012 edition.
More than 2,000 students potentially face removal after a university had its licence to teach and recruit students from outside the EU revoked.
The UK Border Agency (UKBA) says student attendance at London Metropolitan University is not being monitored and that many have no right to be here.
As a result, the university will no longer be allowed to authorise visas.
The university said it would be challenging UKBA’s claims.
A task force has been set up to help students affected by the decision which means some 2,000 overseas non-EU students will have to find an alternative institution to sponsor them or they will be told that they will be removed from the UK.
The government says it wants to assess how many students will be successfully reallocated to alternative institutions before the UKBA sends out notices giving them 60 days to leave. At this stage, the Home Office is unable to say when those notices will be issued.
The UKBA says London Metropolitan University had “failed to address serious and systemic failings” identified six months ago.
Immigration Minister Damian Green said London Metropolitan University had failed in three particular areas:
More than a quarter of the 101 students sampled were studying at the university when they had no leave to remain in this country
Some 20 of 50 checked files found “no proper evidence” that the students’ mandatory English levels had been reached
And some 142 of 250 (57%) sampled records had attendance monitoring issues, which meant it was impossible for the university to know whether students were turning up for classes or not.
Professor Malcolm Gillies, the university’s vice chancellor, described the claims made against the institution as “not particularly cogent” and said it would be disputing them.
“I would go so far as to say that UKBA has been rewriting its own guidelines on this issue and this is something which should cause concern to all universities in the UK,” he said.
‘Panic and heartbreak’
Although there have been other suspensions, no other UK university has been fully stripped of its ability to recruit overseas students.
The National Union of Students (NUS) has contacted Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May to “express anger at the way that decisions have been made in recent weeks and to reiterate the potentially catastrophic effects on higher education as a £12.5bn per year export industry for the UK”.
NUS president Liam Burns added that the decision could have been limited to future students rather than covering existing ones.
Meanwhile, a group of London Metropolitan University students have held a protest outside Downing Street.
Dozens of students and supporters sat in silence in front of the gates to Number 10, with tape over their mouths, before police moved them across the street.
The UKBA said allowing London Metropolitan University to continue to sponsor and teach international students “was not an option”.
It said it had been working with the university since it identified failings six months ago.
It added: “These are problems with one university, not the whole sector. British universities are among the best in the world – and Britain remains a top-class destination for top-class international students.”
Universities Minister David Willetts has announced a task force to help overseas students affected by the decision, which will include UKBA and the NUS.
He said: “It is important that genuine students who are affected through no fault of their own are offered prompt advice and help, including, if necessary, with finding other institutions at which to finish their studies.”
But Universities UK chief executive Nicola Dandridge said the UKBA had made “an extraordinary decision” which was both “surprising and disproportionate”.
“It is one thing raising issues if they have them with London Met and, if appropriate, penalising the university. That may be appropriate or it may not be.
“But penalising legitimate international students is disproportionate and it is damaging to our international reputation.
She also pointed to the “widespread concern” among international students at other universities that they would also be “affected in some way”.
“It is really important they understand that what has happened today and yesterday is isolated and it only affects London Metropolitan.”
The University and College Union also warned that the move would have an impact on future recruitment of foreign students.
Analysis
Hannah RichardsonBBC News education reporter
With increased competition and pressure on funding, many UK universities have looked to the lucrative overseas student market.
This is because overseas non-EU students pay higher fees than home students.
In 2010-11, there were a total of 48,580 overseas undergraduates studying in the UK.
That’s about 11% of the total undergraduate population, but it generates 32% of universities’ fee income.
Overall foreign students contribute an estimated £5bn a year to the wider economy, including fees.
Universities UK says this could increase to £16.9bn by 2025.
But it has warned that moves to tighten visa rules will hit UK universities’ ability to recruit foreign students.
The NUS and academics’ union UCU also fear that taking such a tough stance will send a damaging message to bona fide potential foreign students.
However, the UKBA says London Metropolitan failed to carry out basic procedures.
Rhoda Wilson has been shortlisted in the Best Media Personality Category of the 2012 Nigerian Entertainment and Lifestyle Awards. This honour recognises the contribution that Rhoda has made to the world of Television and The Media in the UK. Her mantra of “Inspiring You to Aspire to Life” has been maintained throughout the course of her media career.
The NIGERIAN ENTERTAINMENT & LIFESTYLE AWARDS (NEL Awards) commenced in 2011 and is the first and best industry event of its kind in the UK celebrating and recognising the achievements of Nigerians in the Entertainment and Lifestyle sectors.
As well as profiling a variety of guests Rhoda Wilson in her own show she has also appeared on a number of TV and radio shows including BBC World Service, VoxAfrica, Bang Radio and Colourful Radio. Rhoda has been profiled on the Business Fight Poverty sites and featured in print publications such Nigeria Watch and New Africa Women.
In 2012 His Excellency President Jacob Zuma and The Government of South Africa invited Rhoda as a guest of the African Union to attend the “Global African Diaspora Summit” in South Africa, one of only 2 members of the British-African Diaspora to receive this invitation. Rhoda is a well-recognised TV personality across the UK diaspora and is proud of this nomination and shortlisting.
As he’s the figurehead of Nigerian Afrobeats, it feels appropriate that D’Banj’s debut UK headline show takes place on the final day of the Notting Hill carnival. Alongside the usual dancehall and soca, a good proportion of the anthems that fuelled this year’s sound systems and floats are the hits that have propelled the rise of Afrobeats in the UK: Atumpan’s The Thing, Ice Prince’s Oleku and, of course, D’Banj’s own Oliver Twist, a song of such popular reach that it even made it on to EastEnders.
Keeping that carnival spirit going is D’Banj’s MO tonight, as is that of a significant proportion of the audience, who have hotfooted it down the road from the carnival. As an entertainer, D’Banj treads the line between suave and rambunctious with ease: his dapper yellow-lapelled blazer is swiftly shed as he starts to rival his own dancers in snake-hipped, low-grinding ability, and the gold chain follows as he plunges off stage for a spot of crowd-surfing. By the show’s climax, D’Banj is half-naked and essaying moves that seem to refer mostly to the title of his forthcoming album, Mr Endowed.
After a late entrance compounded by technical difficulties leaves the crowd slightly restless, D’Banj may feel putting that level of work in is necessary – but it transpires that the music does the trick just as well. “This is not a fluke,” he announces midway through the show, perhaps mindful that not everyone present is aware of his seven-year career before Oliver Twist. Tonight, though, his older material goes down almost as well, from the call-and-response of Why Me to the lovelorn Scapegoat, and D’Banj bridges the gap between his more lilting, organic songs and his recent tougher, trancier dance-floor anthems with ease. His between-song patter has a tendency to ramble, but the show’s culmination in Oliver Twist is stellar proof that an international hit can be engineered with ease if based around a resonant, inarguable statement such as “I like Beyoncé”.
A FRIENDSHIP between museums in Britain and Africa is to be celebrated with a new display for rail fans in County Durham.
Staff at Locomotion: The National Railway Museum at Shildon are set to hold a Sierra Leone Festival.
The exhibition is to celebrate the links between the UK National Railway Museum and the Sierra Leone National Railway Museum in Freetown.
A narrow gauge locomotive from Sierra Leone is already on show at the Shildon museum and a new display about the Sierra Leone Government Railway is to be opened for the event.
The festival will feature a display of photos from Sierra Leone and demonstrations of models from the African country.
There will also be talks about the links between the museums at the festival which runs between Saturday, 8, and Sunday, 9, September.
The Locomotion’s learning team has also worked with local schools to explore themes from Sierra Leone and some of the youngster’s work will be on show.
Visitors to Locomotion will also be able to take a short ride on a steam train at the museum for a small fee.
Entry to the museum and display is free with details from 01388-777999 or visit www.nrm.org.uk/locomotion .
Thousands of immigrants marched in Athens on Friday August 24 to protest police sweeps and a rash of racist attacks in Greece as the country struggles to pull itself out of a huge debt crisis.
Greece is a major gateway for mostly Asian and African migrants trying to enter the European Union. They face increased hostility as the country struggles through its deepest post- World War Two recession and record unemployment, propelling the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party to parliament for the first time since the fall of a military junta in 1974.
About 5,000 protesters marched to parliament holding banners reading “No Islamophobia” and “Neo Nazis out!” in one of the biggest anti-racism marches in Athens in recent years.
Tensions between immigrants and Greeks have risen sharply in recent months and the demonstration was held a day after police detained hundreds of undocumented immigrants in the western city of Corinth as part of a nationwide sweep and held them in a former army camp.
The move enraged local authorities and residents who rallied outside the army camp to protest against its conversion into an immigrant detention center.
“We will do everything possible to prevent such a disaster,” Corinth’s mayor Alexandros Pnevmatikos told Skai TV. “We don’t want the camp, which is in the centre of the city, close to densely populated neighborhoods, to become a holding center”.
Far-right protesters and supporters of Golden Dawn clashed with police at the entrance of the camp on Thursday and hundreds of protesters, including small groups of ultra-nationalists, returned to protest on Friday. Some hurled bottles of water at a conservative deputy visiting the camp.
Police this month launched a sweep operation called “Xenios Zeus” after the ancient Greek god of guests and travellers. They have so far arrested hundreds of illegal immigrants.
Racist attacks against immigrants have increased in Greece since the economic crisis flared in 2009, according to pro-immigrant groups which accuse the police of turning a blind eye.
Human Rights Watch said in a report last month that it had interviewed 59 people who suffered or escaped a racist incident between August 2009 and May this year. But the advocacy group added that the true extent of xenophobic violence in Greece was not clear given many victims do not report the crimes.
Culled from Reuters – Renee Maltezou; Editing by Jon Hemming
For the fourth year in a row, Oprah Winfrey tops Forbes list of highest paid celebrity. It is now one year since Oprah Winfrey ended her talk show, the Oprah Winfrey show, however, this has not affected the media moguls earnings as she has a production company, Harpo stakes in shows such as Dr Phil, Rachael Ray and The Dr Oz Show. She also owns the O magazine, a satellite Radion and her new TV Channel OWN.
According to Forbes magazine estimation, Oprah Winfrey earned $165 million between May 2011 and May 2012 which puts her at the top of the Highest-Paid Celebrities list for the fourth consecutive year.
Below is a list of other celebrities who made the top five
Michael Bay, director of the Transformer – $160 million
Steven Spielberg – $130 million
Jerry Bruckheimer, director of the pirates of the Carribean – $115 million
Dr Dre, ex-rapper and producer of Dr Dre Beats headphone – $110 million
Spanish Magazine de Fuera de Serie altered French portrait of a slave woman from 1800 with an exposed breast and replaced her face with that of Michelle Obama, the American first lady.
The image was accompanied with an article that read, “Michelle Granddaughter of a Slave, Lady of America’. Both Mrs Obama’s great-great grandfather and great-great-great grandmother were slaves.”
