Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Rough upbringing in North London made comic jungle-tough
WHEN it comes to trials it’s fair to say Babatunde Aleshe has not exactly covered himself in glory, although he has had a good smattering of maggots, slime and frogs.
And while he might have whimpered (a lot), each bushtucker trial has been an improvement on his first task when he refused to step on to a plank that extended from the top of a 32-storey building.
So you’d be forgiven for thinking Babatunde might be something of a wobbly jelly. But appearances can be deceptive.
The 36-year-old star said of jungle hardships: “I grew up in Tottenham, so really I lived a struggled life… getting hangry, I kind of know how to deal with.”
Babatunde, dad to Judah, six, opened up on his early life in North London in 2014 documentary Trap Town.
Walking through Brunswick Park, he said: “I saw many fights in this park.
“You know how everybody had yo-yos or Tamagotchis, well everyone had a knife or a stab wound. Everyone was getting stabbed. I even had a knife, that’s how bad it was.”
Babatunde, a close friend of comic Mo Gilligan, then revealed knife crime was so normalised, he even fleetingly considered using his blade.
“At one point, I don’t think I would have used it, but I got into a fight and I brought out my knife and I was like ‘I’m going to stab him’.
“I was going around my whole school going ‘I’m going to stab him! I’m going to stab him’. This girl just looked at me and said, ‘You ain’t going to stab no one’.”
The programme looked at the area in which the 2011 London riots began, and what life was like there three years on.
Although he was not at the riots himself, Babatunde revealed he would have been tempted to take to the streets to protest the death of Mark Duggan – shot dead by a Met Police officer in Tottenham – but his mother stopped him.
The star, who is married to his childhood sweetheart Leonie, also revealed that the family was struggling with poverty.
He said: “I had holes in my shoes and stuff like that.
I’d come to school and the kids would tease me.”
Asked by documentary-maker Sebastien Thiel what kept his life on the straight and narrow, the comic explained that it wasn’t in his heart to be a gang member.
He added: “My mum, she definitely would have found out, and not only that, if I’m getting all this money, my mum would have been like, ‘You ain’t got no job. You’re buying trainers, buying this, buying that. Where is all of this coming from?’”
Despite his mother calling him Doctor Tunde as a kid and hoping he would be a lawyer, a doctor or a barrister,
Babatunde’s dream of being an actor and comedian came true.
He has featured on shows from Eastenders to Doctor Who and won comedy gongs including Best Newcomer at the Black Entertainment Comedy Awards.