Ade Adepitan on the Importance of Sport, His Journey to the Paralympics, and a Fairy Tale Wedding

This next episode of In Their Shoes with Jamie Windust is so incredibly inspiring, Jamie is a writer, a cultural commentator, and I Weigh community member based in London And sits down with British television presenter, and internationally acclaimed wheelchair basketball player Ade Adepitan to reflect on obstacles, perseverance and spirit. And I just know you will love it as much as I do. I'm feeling slightly underdressed Jamie. You should have told me that this is this is how we were doing it: glam. You know, I mean, I've just rocked in in a T-shirt. I don't know what you're talking about Ade. I haven't put any effort in. No effort? No. You just woke up like that. Rolled out of bed. That's what I'm talking about. When I was scouring the Internet to find out everything about you, there's nothing that you don't do. I will say that very clearly now. You're an author. You are an MBE holder, which I think is quite, quite a mood. My parents loved it. Yeah. My mum and dad were very happy about it. I want to take it back to kind of your childhood and how back then, how you kind of thought your life was going to pan out, because obviously at the time when you moved to the U.K., you were very young and socially at that time, it was not a great space for black people. What kind of was your experience growing up and think when you're thinking about your future? How was that for you? When you're younger, you don't really look into the future that deeply. You're kind of like, well, I just I just hope the kids at school like me, you know, I hope I fit in or I hope West Ham, the local football team, win their next games, you know, and something like as shallow as that. In terms of myself, I always knew I was different. I was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and I contracted polio at the age of 15 months and my parents realized that I was going to be unable to walk. They knew that they had to make a pretty big decision in order to improve my life and improve the opportunities in my life. And so they decided to use all their savings, borrow money from friends and family and move to the UK. But whilst doing that, I had an older sister, she was a year older than me. She was born with Down syndrome. And my parents had this really awful decision because they couldn't afford to take us both over. They had to make this decision about. Whether they should leave one of us behind and who they'd leave behind and in the end they left my sister behind. And so when we came over to the UK, I suppose the first thing that was really difficult to deal with is that I had to carry that weight of "you are the lucky one". You know, you are the one who's been chosen to come over here. My first day of school, I was the first disabled kid to be allowed to go to this mainstream school full of able bodied kids. I was one of maybe three black kids, so this was like 1979 in East London in that school. I spoke with a strong Nigerian accent. I did not speak, I didn't speak like this. I spoke like this. "Ha! How are you doing?" So of course in East London that made me stand out straight away and you know, not quite as flamboyant as you, but my mum, dressed me up in a pink checkered suit, flared suit. I think you're saying good. On my first day of school, well, and this is a school where there was no uniforms allowed. So, yeah, I mean, I was I knew on that first day of school that I was going to have to deal with many, many obstacles. It's a lot, especially at that age, like having to have that feeling. And often now as you're older have that conversation with young people about those barriers that you face that aren't your issue. But what got you through that? I mean, it's a really good point you make that the the weight and the burden and the responsibility that you carry with you is generally put on you by society and also the time and the place. You know, these can really impact you. I guess for me, I was really fortunate in that one, I was pretty articulate. I was. Or another way of saying it is I was a gobby young kid. I was I was a gobby shite. I stood up for myself. You know, if someone said something, I was prepared to say stuff back. And I was quite witty so I could usually cut people down. But that ended up in, ended me up in a few fights because, you know, if you have an argument with someone and and you say something that makes them look stupid and they have no answer back, then their answer tends to be fistacuffs, you know what I mean, so I had plenty of times when I rolled around on the ground fighting with people. Fortunately for me, I was really good at sport. It just twisted people's melons. Yeah. Because, well, you don't expect a guy who comes in right. In a pink checkered suit. Yeah. I walked on calipers, so I had these big metal rods that I would wear in my legs in this hospital boot. The last thing most kids would expect is for that kid to be a decent footballer. Yeah. And I remember on my first day of school, I saw a group of kids playing football in the corner of the playground. Asked if I could join in. They looked at me, they was like "No way". I moaned and nagged at them. And then by the final play time just to shut me up, they said, "Alright, you can play". I was picked last and they stuck me in, stuck me in goal. I remember within the first couple of minutes, best footballer in our school came, broke loose and it was one on one against me. There we go. And he blasted this ball and this guy in a pink checkered with the caliper and a crazy accent managed to leap to one side like a salmon, you know, like an athletic salmon and save this ball from gaining the goal. And I think it changed everyone's perceptions of me straight away because they were just suddenly like, "Wow, how does that work?" [Jamie] Yeah. You know, "That doesn't fit together. Someone who's good at sport shouldn't look like that." Yeah. Yeah. Was sport for you a safe space? Because I know that obviously you moved that into basketball and really got into wheelchair basketball. I think often we can find our hobbies as more than just enjoyment. As an athlete and more of kind of like "This is my space, I've chosen this really safe, comfortable space and I enjoy it there." Did you find that when you kind of moved into that world? Sport was like my superpower. It was like my armor and my overcoat. When I played sport, I felt like I was on a level playing field with people, you know, I felt free, I felt confident and I felt in control of my destiny. No one could judge me. No one could prejudge me. If I could save a ball, if I could shoot a ball through the net, if I could defend really well, then you know that's all down to me. And too often it's really difficult to find a mechanism or to find something that can give you that that strength and that confidence. Yeah. Yes. I've played for Great Britain and gone on to win medals and stuff like that. But some of the best moments for me have been when it's just been me in a basketball court, in a hall, 6-7 o'clock in the morning before anyone is there. The smell, the sound, to shoot in a hoop. [Jamie] Yeah. Just playing, just sweating, just working hard and just playing and just challenging myself. Sport gives you an opportunity to be better every day. And I could shoot six hundred out of eight hundred shots today and then I go in tomorrow and I can shoot six hundred and one out of eight hundred shots, which makes me feel like I was better and I was moving forward because I had something to measure my success and so I could come out of the sport or come out of a game feeling confident. And it didn't matter what anyone had said because I proved myself on the basketball court. Exactly. And it's for you, I think that's the best thing. A lot of people, especially nowadays in the age of social media, try and do things for other people or they better themselves for an ulterior motive. But finding your thing like, for example, mine is fashion, mines beauty. Like mine is using that to become a better person. I need some tips from you bro. [Jamie] Well. You know what I mean, I mean I'm lacking, my game is, my game is not strong, it's weak. As you can tell vice versa my sport game is... All right. I see it right. That's what we'll do. We'll get you on the basketball court. Can I wear these on the basketball court? Would that work? I mean, it'd be entertaining to see you wear those on the basketball court. And try and do a few moves with those heels. Is that right? Is that correct? What was that? Is that right? That's what we do. Yes. Sort of. Hold on a sec. It seems like this was just one way I was teaching you how to play basketball. So you need to? Yeah. My top tip is everyone always says, look in the mirror, take one thing off before you leave. I say, look in the mirror, add two. Add two? Put two things on? And they have to be the complete opposite color. Okay. So maybe we could throw a headscarf on. Yeah. We could throw. I reckon you'd look great in these Ade. Yeah. All right. All right. I mean I'm a size nine. There we go. I'll make some calls. We'll make it happen. Ye ye. You were such a young age eight nine kind of finding your passion. Did you ever dream that you would be in the Paralympics? Did I dream that I'd ever be in the Paralympics? First of all, no. And the main reason was because I didn't even know the Paralympics existed when I was a kid. You know, you're talking about late 70s, early 80s. And I think many people today, and quite rightly so, and I'm really happy about that. Have decent knowledge of Paralympic sport, but I think that only really came about because of 2012. [Jamie] Yeah. We're talking eight years ago, you know, I started playing the sport, you know, thirty years ago, more than thirty years ago. We'd have one man and his dog coming to watch us play in our matches. And his dog would be asleep. I thought I was going to have to compete against able-bodied people. Against good old fashioned two leggers. Yeah. That's what I call you guys. Yeah. I thought I was going to, I was going to be the first disabled kid, the first kid with polio to play football with England. I always said, you know, if I played football for England, we would have won the World Cup by now. I discovered wheelchair basketball when I was about twelve or thirteen and this happened by total coincidence. I was spotted as I was being raced through the streets in a Tesco shopping trolley by my friends. I was spotted by two physiotherapists who were based in Canning Town in East London. They'd set up a junior wheelchair basketball team. They've realized that sport was a great way to teach kids with disabilities independence and to give them confidence. And they used and they wanted sport to be the outlet. They'd heard about me and they were dropping some kids off home from a basketball match. When they saw me. Racing through. Yeah in the shopping trolley. They pulled up beside me and then asked me if I would like to play wheelchair basketball. And this is the thing. At the time I looked at them and I was like, "What? Wheelchair basketball? How the hell does that work?" And the other thing about it is actually, I was probably when I think back, I was ashamed of my disability. I wouldn't walk past mirrors or windows because that's the time when I would notice that I had a disability. I thought walking on calipers was bad, but then to be told about getting in a wheelchair. They were hosting junior wheelchair games. And this was the first time I saw loads of different people with disabilities. Suddenly to see people with spinal cord injuries, people with visual impairments, you know, people with cerebral palsy. It was just like, "Wow, where were, who are these people? What what is this all about?" And then I just happened to see some guys who were paying for the Great Britain wheelchair men's basketball team. And they blew all my preconceptions of disability out the window, totally, and all of them weren't just in it just to play sport recreationally. Yeah. They wanted to play in the Paralympics and they, I suddenly learned about the Paralympics, about this equivalent of the Olympics, and that was it. I think as well, when you first see your people and you see them actually just achieving and and thriving rather than just surviving, it's like you forget the amount of potential that you have. What kind of obstacles did you face when it came to kind of getting more into TV and moving into documentaries? Because I think what you do through that is you provide that experience you've just described for other people. I never had any intention of getting into TV because as we talked about a little bit earlier, I never saw anyone like myself on TV. So why would I go on TV? Because I was already dealing with the nonsense of disability and I intersect in disability and being a person of color. And so I had these two pronged things that were just attacking me from both sides. This guy came from this cable TV company. He contacted my friend. He said, "Do you know anyone who plays wheelchair basketball?" And my mate contacted me and he said, "This company want to film you and they want to film someone who's in Great Britain team." I'm not in the Great Britain team. I'm still trying to get in that team at the time. So I can't do that. I can't lie. I'm going to look like an idiot. I don't know about this. And he said "They're paying 250 quid" I said, "Tell them that I'm the captain of the team." Because I was broke at the time. They contacted me and told me about a children's show that they were doing for Channel five, and they wanted me to be the lead presenter. Like "What?" I remember telling, I remember telling one of my friends I was saying, you know, "These guys want me to be a presenter on this kid's show and it's going to be on Channel five on proper TV." And my friend said to me, "People like us, people like you, we don't get on TV." But luckily for me, these guys believed in me more than I believed in myself. And I felt so grateful for me and those people that I've tried to do that in the work that I and the opportunities that I've had in TV. As you mentioned, the kind of shows that I do on TV are about empowerment, are about telling stories of of people who don't usually have a voice. Yeah. Those industries are very white, very cis-gendered, very straight. And often when we come into those spaces, although we have the talent and the skill set to be able to do our jobs, we are underestimated or not given those opportunities. I've never had or seen a role model, someone who I could look at and say, "Oh, this is how it's been done." I don't want to big myself up, but I felt like I've had to blaze my own trail. [Jamie] Yeah. I've had to make my own mistakes and learn. I remember the first time I, I worked I worked at BBC. That's where I know you from. We were the first to have So Solid Crew on the show. That's true. And we had Rihanna we had all of these live acts. We'd gunge kids live on the show it was amazing. Always a dream of mine. To be gunged on live TV? Right now. I'll bring it back for you. Thank you so much. There you go. When I first went up for that job, was joining the BBC, I hope people take this right away. But I never met so many people who'd been to Oxford and Cambridge. Yeah. Who spoke in a certain way. It was a different world from the world that I grew up in. And I found many times sort of in the early days, massive communication problems. But what I really had to master was not just learning to speak their language, but as I mentioned before, keeping my identity. Staying as me. And it was a constant challenge and a battle for me. The amount of times that I've got into very serious situations or professional situations. And people think that just from the way that I look, that it's I have nothing to give. They'll ask you to look a certain way, or talk a certain way, and it's like, well, no, it's a very simple answer. If you're on my basketball team, if you can score, you're in. You know, if you've got those heels there and you can you can make layups and shoot three points, three point shots, you're in. You know what I mean, I'm not sure with that that technique. No. I mean, it's more likely to hit the ground, but it's all good. So in a U-turn, I want to talk about love because you have a very a very romantic story, lots of, you had my dream, which was a Hello magazine shoot. Hello magazine. I just need to ask how the Hello shoot was. Basically, they used our pictures. Oh. So we got to use our own photographer. We didn't want it to be super intrusive. But yeah, I mean, the wedding was the wedding was incredible. It was. It was is incredible. Sorry, I'm saying it like I was there. Or like I was your bride. Well, you know, you want me to say, you know where I got, where we got married. Absolutely. Yeah. So because I got an MBE, just as a joke, I said, you know, if you have an MBE, you can get married in St. Paul's Cathedral. I didn't think she would take it seriously. She was like "Yeah, we've got to do it." It's not as glamorous as you think because you go to St. Paul's Cathedral, everyday people have to get married in the crypt, which is down below. And there's like all these big, like, tombstones of big famous, you know, historical figures from from British history. But it's quite dark and it's dingy and it's down below. No disrespect to people who get married there. You know, it's not quite as glamorous as you think. A week before we were due to get married, I was traveling, making a documentary in Africa. I think I might've been in the Congo. And I got a call and it's like "You won't believe it." We're being called by the vicar and he said "The lift to go down to the crypt is broken." But I had not just myself, I had a few of my friends from my basketball team all in wheelchairs. How are we going to get down there? Because it's loads of stairs. A couple of days before the wedding and the vicars gone, "I would not be able to live with myself if on the day we fix the lift and then it broke down and you couldn't get down to get married." And he said, "So just for this one occasion, we are going to allow you to get married upstairs in the main chapel." And the last people, I think to get married there were Charles and Diana. [Ade] That went well didn't it. But yeah, yeah. I'm this kid who was born in Lagos, Nigeria, grew up in East London. And we're in this most glamorous historical place is. It's a big mood. Yeah, it was. It was it was it was it was big. I think there's a lot of, I don't know, taboo and misconceptions about disability and, you know, love and sex and relationships, you know. And I know for many disabled people, it can be really difficult, you know, to find. I think for people full stop. I would hate to be trying to date now. [Ade] I just think it's, it'd be so hard. Because everyone's so judgmental and everyone's looking for perfection. [Ade] I'm surprised. They're looking for it and I'm still here. What's going on? Been here the whole time. I tell you what, maybe you've gone above perfection. Maybe you're ethereal. You know, that that's on towards heavenly. Right. That's the strapline. If you were the prime minister today, what's the first thing you'd do? Put down the price of donuts. Right. Cats or dogs? Dogs. What's your favorite thing about my face? The the the the make up thing that goes up on the eyes? Thank you so much. Yeah, that is cool. Summer or winter? Summer. Best film you've seen this year? How about The Umbrella Academy? It's not a film, but I'll allow it. [Ade] Thank you. There's some good looking people on that show. Is that your criteria? Yeah, that's it. Jeez! Meghan or Kate? Oh flipping heck. Off of the royals. I'm going to be kicked out of the country. Do I have to choose? Unfortunately. Meghan. Wow. Because the children's books kind of focus around young disabled people looking at superhero being that superhero character. I learned this quite late on you know, it was after I'd written my first book and I was speaking to a journalist there and she said that especially when it comes to kids books, there were two types of books. There are mirror books and there are window books. You know, mirror book tends to reflect your own reality and window books give you an opportunity to see into somebody else's reality. The books that have been out there, children's books that have been out there, tend to reflect the reality of a very small group of people. It made me think about when I was growing up and think about the books that I read and were there any disabled kids in those books? Were there any kids of color in those books? Not many. And I wanted to write books where, you know, every kid could see a reflection of themselves, or if they didn't see a reflection of themselves, they got an opportunity to see into the lives of other people. It's about a group of kids, the Parsons Road gang, who are and the main person in the gang is a young kid called Eddie, who has a disability. That's a good name. Right, sounds familiar. It's a good name. And he finds out that he's a superhero and they go off and solve, going on all these adventures, solving these mysteries, dealing with the school bully. But at the crux of the book, it's all about celebrating difference and showing that it's okay to be different. In fact, it's more than okay to be different. It's cool to be different. And I tried to say to people out there, "Own your own cool." That's what these books are about. It's about a celebration of difference and showing that you need different people. You need different characters in order to enrich your lives and in order to overcome obstacles. Will I? Would you put me in? Book two the protagonist was the night spider, book three was the masked marauder. What could we call Jamie? The bald clown. No I'm joking. Well big up to difference, Jamie. Big up to difference. Are we cheersing? Yeah, yeah. Let's clink it man. [Ade] Boom. Oh we have to drink. We must drink. Down in one. Down in one.