Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Airport nightmare showed me the hurt and anger racism victims suffer every day
Fortnum & Mason decides to shelve ‘torture in a tin’
Rapper Lady Leshurr is the definition of tallawah. “It’s a word we use back home, from my Caribbean heritage,” she says. “It means strong and fearless.”
Her dazzling performance on Dancing on Ice shows the fighting spirit that makes her determined to break down any barriers in her way.
And though she refuses to see herself as any kind of victim, she admits that as a black woman she has faced certain barriers. “We do have to work 10 times harder,” she says.
Her motto is: “Whenever I have a no, I turn that into a yes.”
But that drive and positivity took a hammering when George Floyd was killed by white police officers in Minneapolis. It sparked global outrage but for Leshurr it triggered a traumatic personal memory of an ugly racist incident at a Spanish airport she had tried hard to bury.
Growing up as Melesha O’garro in a predominantly white neighbourhood in Solihull, West Midlands, she says she never saw colour or felt discrimination. “I didn’t even know I was black,” she says. “That’s how it was in my neighbourhood.”
But the barriers began to appear as she grew up and went out into the world.
The 32-year-old says: “As I got older and started to travel, that’s when I realised there were people who will view you differently.”
Being a woman was a factor, as well as skin colour. She says: “There was a point where you had to look a certain way, to have sex appeal, wear your hair long, make up... When I first got my introduction to [record] labels and meetings, that was one of the suggestions that came up every time. I’m a little tomboy. I barely wear dresses.”
But in 2016, the year she won the Best Female Act MOBO award, she endured a racist incident that left her scarred when she was manhandled by a guard at an airport in Spain. She says: “I was going back home from a show, I went into the duty free shops and I asked where the perfumes were.
“I heard the security guard say ‘perra negra’ – black b **** .
“I asked ‘Did you just call me...?’ He got defensive. He reached for his handcuffs, and that’s when I was resisting because I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ There were people all around, filming, a lot were English, it was very embarrassing and aggressive.”
She says that when the handcuffs failed to open
the guard began hitting her arms with them, leaving her with cuts. She was marched “like a criminal” to a room where she was interrogated by other guards until she insisted they watch CCTV footage. She says: “When they saw, they didn’t give me an apology, didn’t even look at me, they just pointed to the door.” She and the pal she was travelling with were then taken to their flight desk, where she says officials told staff not to let them board as they had been “disruptive”. The two had to spend the night in the airport waiting for another flight. She tells of “that fury, that pain, that hurt, that anger that builds up inside you because you can’t do anything about it”. She had tried to put it behind her but spoke out last year amid the Black Lives Matter
protests that followed the killing of George Floyd in the US.
“I only told that story because of Black Lives Matter,” she says. “It made me realise a lot of people go through this on an everyday basis.”
She praises footballer Marcus Rashford for fighting racist abuse on social media, and says sites such as Instagram, owned by Facebook, must act. This week the firm said it would ban accounts sending abusive messages.
Leshurr says: “There will be a lot of young people on the internet who don’t even know that something’s offensive, because it’s still posted.”
That “tallawah” fighting spirit is what made her take to the ice rink with pro skater Brendyn Hatfield.
“It’s a very scary thing to be a part of but I wanted to try new things,” she says. “We don’t show no fear, we just
FURY In 2016, year of airport ordeal
go for it. I always feel like that with Brendyn, like a little pocket rocket.”
Last week she got top scores for her Candyman routine, and for the Valentine’s Day show they will perform as Anthony and Cleopatra to Nelly Furtado’s Maneater.
But Leshurr’s smiles hide a private heartache after sister Carmen died from breast cancer in 2019, aged 39.
Her husband had previously died, so their eight children were orphaned.
Leshurr’s mum gave up her job to care for them in a home Leshurr has helped to buy.
She says: “I got involved in Dancing on Ice as a distraction from grieving. It’s really helped and I know my sister’s watching me, I know she’s happy and proud.”
FOIE gras has been dumped by the Queen’s grocer Fortnum & Mason after pressure from stars including Joanna Lumley and Ricky Gervais.
The pricey delicacy, dubbed “torture in a tin”, is made by force-feeding ducks and geese through metal pipes thrust in their throats to enlarge their livers.
Fortnum & Mason said it will not restock foie gras once it has sold the last few tins available online. While it is illegal to make the product in the UK, it is still sold in posh stores – although the Government is considering a ban.
Animal lovers have spent years trying to get Fortnum & Mason to stop selling foie gras. One campaigner was the late Bond star, Sir Roger Moore. His widow
Kristina Tholstrup said he would have been “delighted” to hear this week’s news. Animal rights group Peta said:
“We’re thrilled the penny finally dropped and Fortnum & Mason is joining the extensive list of iconic British institutions to reject this torture in a tin.”
And wildlife expert Chris Packham said: “This is a timely signal that times are changing.” Fortnum said it made the decision last year in “an ongoing focus on the way we do business”.