Celebrity Race Across the World’s Kola Bokinni on life-changing importance of good social housing

“It made me realise I know nothing about maps, but actually, I’m a good people person,” he says. “It also made me realise how much I love living. Sometimes we’re so busy keeping the wheels turning that we forget to just breathe and count our blessings.”

Big Issue meets Bokinni much closer to home: at Ozzie’s Coffee Shop on Peckham’s Rye Lane, a bustling jumble of market stalls, chicken shops and cool grungy pubs. “I’ve been coming here since I was a baby,” Bokinni says of Ozzies, a newly spruced-up greasy spoon where the coffee is served strong and piping hot.

“Me and my sisters would come in with my mum when she was running errands in Peckham: buying meat from the Irish butchers or going to Primark,” Bokinni adds. “And now my gym is right next door, so I come in whenever I want a good bacon sandwich.”

Kola Bokinni, 32, was born and raised nearby and still lives up the road. “Being a Peckham boy toughened me up because when I was a kid, it wasn’t an easy place to live,” he says. “It’s more hipster now – there’s all these lovely shops and bars with beer gardens. But when I was eight or nine, it wasn’t like that – there was nothing much to do.”

Bokinni is acutely aware that this diverse south-east London neighbourhood was a logical place for his parents to put down roots.

“When my mum came over from Ireland, she made Peckham her home because back then, it was kind of a safe haven for Black people and Irish people,” he says. “You know those [racist signs] saying: ‘No Irish, no Blacks, no dogs’? Well, I would have been screwed because I’m Irish and Black.”

Bokinni’s Irish mother and Nigerian father raised their seven children in social housing on the North Peckham estate. It was brought to national attention in tragic circumstances in 2000 when a 10-year-old resident, Damilola Taylor, died on a stairwell after being stabbed with a glass bottle. Six years later, two local brothers were convicted of manslaughter.

“I knew him,” Bokinni says solemnly. In 2020, Bokinni’s broadcaster sister Yinka, who is now a BBC Radio 1 DJ, presented a deeply moving Channel 4 documentary about Taylor, Damilola: The Boy Next Door.

Bokinni says the estate always had “a strong sense of community” in spite of its problems. “My dad used to give maths lessons to all the kids in the area,” he recalls. “I didn’t like it, because it meant I had to do another maths lesson every single night!”

Bokinni is passionate about the life-changing importance of good social housing. “Without social housing, we would have been homeless because there wouldn’t have been anywhere for us to live – we couldn’t afford anywhere [else],” he says.

In Labour’s election manifesto, Keir Starmer promised to build 1.5 million homes during the next parliament, including “more housing that is cheaper to rent or buy like social housing”. However, his government has yet to announce any specific plans.

Asked what he would say to the new PM, Bokinni replies: “Put yourself in seven-year-old Kola’s shoes. There are millions of seven-year-old Kolas out there. Just because you aren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth, doesn’t mean you should be born homeless.”

Bokinni’s family didn’t have much materially, but the household was rich in conversation. His parents were “great talkers” who “loved to host” and he enjoyed “putting on performances and things” with his siblings. “[Yinka and I] definitely got our communication skills from my mum and dad,” he says.

Bokinni grew up wanting to be a footballer, but when it became clear that this dream “wasn’t working”, he felt that “acting chose me“. He found it difficult to get motivated in class until his year 10 drama teacher told him about the BRIT School, a free-to-attend performing arts academy in Croydon that now counts Adele and RAYE among its alumni.

He began taking acting classes first as a Saturday student, then as a pupil at the main school, which meant catching two trains each way from Monday to Friday. “I remember one day the train stopped running at West Croydon so I ran the rest of the way in Doc Martens,” he says. “That’s how much I wanted to act.”

When he was 15, Bokinni lost his mother to cancer, which changed the family dynamic overnight. “My sister Sade became my guardian because there was no one to look after me. She was 24 and had to grow up like that,” he recalls.

He believes he was probably too young to process fully what had happened. “Suddenly people were giving me a lot of attention, so I started acting out because I kind of liked the attention, but you don’t realise at the time that this [loss] is for life,” he says.

The following year, he auditioned for Skins, the seminal British teen series that helped to launch the careers of Dev Patel, Nicholas Hoult and Daniel Kaluuya. He made it through several rounds, but “just missed out” on a role, which he admits was “quite devastating”.

Deflated, Bokinni stepped away from acting for a few years until a girlfriend encouraged him to try again. In 2012, he landed a role in Peckham: The Soap Opera, a play about life in the area staged at the Bussey Building on Rye Lane. When it transferred to the prestigious Royal Court Theatre, a reviewer spotted Bokinni’s “natural comic timing”.

He then appeared in the zeitgeist-grabbing TV series Black Mirror and Top Boy before being cast as Ted Lasso‘s formidable centre-back Isaac McAdoo. Kola Bokinni says the show has “done amazing things for my life”, but admits that back in 2020, he was wary of accepting the role.

“I was like, it’s a show about this American guy who comes over and tells us how to play football? But I’ve been playing football my whole life!” he laughs.

Ted Lasso was supposed to have ended with last year’s third season, but in August it was reported by Deadline that producers are reaching out again to key cast members. “Whatever happens, I’ll be there for them, because they were there for me,” Bokinni says carefully.

Kola Bokinni has also done charity work with Alzheimer’s Research UK after seeing his father gradually deteriorate in the grip of vascular dementia. He passed away last October – “literally on the day of Halloween, what a guy”, Bokinni adds wryly.

After Celebrity Race Across the World, he is open to another reality show challenge on top of more acting roles. “I did this because I want to show people what I’m really like – I’m Kola first and an actor second,” he says. “So if it’s a decent one – none of those rubbish shows – I’d love to show even more of myself.”

Celebrity Race Across the World is on on BBC One on Wednesdays at 9pm and on BBC iPlayer.

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