Big Brother presenter AJ Odudu has opened up about the racism she faced growing up – including having dogs set on her, a banana thrown out of a car, and losing her best friend because the girl’s father didn’t approve.
AJ, who with Will Best has been fronting the ITV2 Big Brother revival, revealed when she grew up in Blackburn, Lancashire, she didn’t know anyone of colour outside her family until she went to secondary school, where there was one boy and one girl of Jamaican and Ghanian heritage.
Speaking on Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast, the 35-year-old presenter confessed that growing up she hated the innocent attention she attracted for looking different – but even as early as when she was nine years old people started becoming unkind.
Asked if there were many other people of Nigerian heritage in Blackburn, she said: ‘No, nobody, it was me, my brothers and sisters, and my first cousins.
‘In reception, those were the first times, when I was about five, six, that I thought “I stand out here.”‘
Shocking: Big Brother presenter AJ Odudu has opened up about the racism she faced growing up – including having dogs set on her and a banana thrown out of a car
AJ continued: ‘That was when people started touching my hair and saying “why does your hair feel like this and why are the palms of your hands white, but nowhere else is white?” I found that really confusing.
‘I remember going home and saying “Mum, why is that the case, what is going on here?” That is when my mum started to teach me about Nigeria and say “there’s loads of people that look like you, they’re just not in this country.”‘
When asked by Gyles if it ever felt good being the only Nigerian in her class, she said: ‘No. I literally developed so much quicker than everyone else.
‘I was taller than everyone, my hair was bigger than everyone’s, my skin was darker than everyone’s, my voice even was deeper than everybody’s voice. Kids pick at these things and you can’t do anything about it.
‘I just hated any attention on me at that time. I was just like ‘I’ve just got to get through the school day and get back home to my brothers and sisters.”‘
Asked if that extended to anything unkind, she revealed: ‘Yes, absolutely. The unkind words didn’t start until I was a little bit older. At least I didn’t acknowledge them until I was more around the age of nine say.
‘Even when I was in reception and people were picking on things that were different about me it didn’t appear to come out in a malicious way.
‘Then as we got older, I think then it became more unkind.’
Culture shock: AJ, who grew up in Blackburn, Lancashire, revealed she would ask her mother Florence why she looked different to her white school friends (pictured in childhood)
But she felt much of the unpleasantness was prompted by children’s parents, and she was forced to break contact with her best friend because the girl’s father wouldn’t let his daughter speak to AJ because she was black.
AJ said: ‘I remember thinking the first time that I thought ‘maybe it’s not the children, maybe it’s the parents that influences’, because I used to play with this girl at school called Lianne.
READ MORE: Big Brother viewers praise ‘queen’ AJ Odudu for grilling Chanelle during ‘toughest’ exit interview of the series
‘As kids we’d hold hands in the playground and share our lunches, and then I’ll never forget, she said ‘right, you’ve got to let go of my hand soon’. I said ‘yeah, sure’ and we were like playing all the way to the school gates and she said ‘No, let go’.
‘And she ran off to her dad, who I then heard tell her off for speaking to me.
‘And I couldn’t believe it. I was like ‘she’s not allowed to play with me, but it’s not that she doesn’t want to, it’s because her dad doesn’t want her to do that’.
‘I just kept it to myself. I was really upset but that is just what it was.
‘We just didn’t remain friends. I remember thinking “Oh my gosh, I’m not going to feel comfortable in her house. Number one, I probably wouldn’t be invited round for tea, number two, if I was invited round for tea, I wouldn’t feel very comfortable, she wouldn’t be allowed round to mine for tea – like literally, this relationship can go no further.”
‘It’s kind of like a stark realisation that the world isn’t as kind and as innocent as you think it is.’
But later AJ – whose Nigerian mum Florence, a cleaner, and dad James, who worked as a lab technician, joiner and bus conductor, had eight children – was to find the racism in her community becoming far more apparent and frightening.
She said: ‘I do remember having dogs set on me because of the colour of my skin. I remember that.
‘I remember somebody throwing a banana out of a car window and it hitting me on the head. I remember those things.’
Career high: AJ and Will Best have been fronting the ITV2 Big Brother revival and she will be at the helm for the live final on Friday night
But she said her attempt at stopping the cruelty getting to her was to block it out and try to push it from her mind.
She said: ‘I remember certain bad things, but I don’t know exactly if it was the first time or something had happened before.
‘I really just would block it all out. I find it really tricky to depict the first things that were bad that happened because I guess I’ve literally pushed them to the back of my mind.’
Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth is released every Friday on all major platforms.
