He’s a street dancer, TV personality and poster boy for primetime talent shows, but the lockdown has revealed a tougher side to Ashley Banjo, writes Emma Higginbotham
It’s been a rollercoaster year for Ashley Banjo. There’ve been plenty of ups: his son Micah, “the happiest baby in the world”, was born just as the country locked down last March. He’s written an engagingly bonkers children’s book with his brother, Jordan. The TV career is flourishing (he’s just finished judging ITV’s Dancing on Ice). And, 11 years after nearly 20 million people watched him win Britain’s Got Talent with his street dance crew, Diversity, Ashley was back on the show in September, standing in for judge Simon Cowell, who’d broken his back falling off an electric bike.
But here’s where it tipped downwards. During the show, Diversity performed a powerful routine reflecting the hardships of 2020. With all the mesmerising synchronicity and high-flying flips that made their name, it included a moment when Ashley, hands behind his back, lay face-down on the floor. A man dressed as an American police officer loomed over him, and the voiceover proclaimed “Black Lives Matter”.
The response was extraordinary. Nearly 25,000 people complained to Ofcom, making it one of the most talked-about TV moments of the decade, and Ashley received a deluge of racist messages and threats. Did he imagine it would blow up like that?
“No, I didn’t have any idea at all,” says the 32-year-old. “We re-enacted what happened with George Floyd to ram home how wrong what was happening in the world was. It might have been shocking to put it in a routine, and make people sit up at 9 o’clock on a Saturday night, but it didn’t seem controversial to me. It just seemed like the truth.”
The overriding complaint was that an entertainment show wasn’t the place for a political statement. “So we can talk about war, climate change, the dog meat trade, rights for disabled people, but when it’s something as uncomfortable and deep-rooted as racism, it’s not the time or place? I find that really interesting.”
Ofcom agreed and refused to investigate, and ITV showed their support for Diversity with full-page ads in the national press. “It was incredible,” he says. “It felt like the times were changing, and we were a part of that shift.”
Telling stories through dance has been second nature to Ashley since childhood. The son of Funso, a Nigerian-born boxer, and former ballerina Danielle, he grew up surrounded by dancers, and inevitably joined in.
“My dad had a boxing gym, and they turned it into a dance studio to earn more money, because we weren’t massively well off,” he says. “My mum was never a pushy mum, I was just always there.” Boxing wasn’t an option: “My dad wouldn’t let me! He said ‘You’re going to put your face to better uses than being punched around’.”
But being boys who danced made Ashley and Jordan, who’s four years younger, a magnet for bullies – especially in their non-diverse Essex neighbourhood. “We were both really tall, we’re both black, we both danced, and we were surrounded by normal-height white kids that played football,” he recalls. “We stuck out, and kids either embraced that, or they picked on us.
“Obviously because of our size it was very rare that anyone tried to pick on us physically, but you’d get the name-calling, and ‘Why does your hair stand up? Why do you dance like a girl?’ It was horrible, but what really saved us was we’d leave school and we went to another world. Five nights a week, we went over to our studio, and we had our friendship group there.”
A close-knit team of brothers and lifelong pals, Diversity meant everything to Ashley. Which is why, when Britain’s Got Talent scouts invited them to audition for the second series in 2008, he said no.
“I didn’t know if people would like what we do, and I liked what we did too much to go on TV and get buzzed and make everyone feel rubbish. I was never doing it for fame, so I said ‘nah, I don’t think it’s for us’. Then for the third series, the boys were like ‘Come on Ash, we really want to do it’, so I said OK, 11 against one, let’s go.”
With their imaginative, immaculately-timed routines, Diversity sailed through the heats, but the bookies’ favourite by a country mile was Susan Boyle. “The final was the easiest part because we weren’t competing to win. We were like ‘well, Susan’s won, so let’s just go out and have the best time’.” And when their name was announced? “Just type in ‘Diversity winning moment’,” he laughs. “Everybody’s mouth is open. Everyone. We just couldn’t believe it.”
At the time Ashley, then 20, was in the midst of a physics degree, but TV executives saw something in the bright, polite young man. He was offered a judging role on Sky’s Got To Dance, and went on to host programmes including BBC’s Can’t Touch This with Zoe Ball and Channel 4’s Flirty Dancing. But it’s all been a sideline to his work – and sell-out global tours – with Diversity. “I would have half the money and half the opportunities if it meant sticking together as a group,” he says.
That essence of friendship shines through in his new children’s book, The Fly High Crew: The Green Glow. The first in a series co-written with Jordan, it’s about a street dance troupe tackling an alien invasion, complete with robot teachers, mind-control sweets and elephantine vegetables.
Given that the crew is led by steadfast Trey and his little brother, Jax, it’s not a huge leap to work out the inspiration for the characters, or what’s behind the theme of teamwork, tenacity and standing up for what’s right.
“As a group it’s what we’ve always done,” he says. “Obviously we haven’t had to defend the world from an alien invasion yet, but you know what? I'm sure if we had to, we’d give it a good go.”
::The Fly High Crew: The Green Glow by Ashley and Jordan Banjo is out on 1 April
Ashley was 17 when his future wife Francesca, who’s 18 months older, came to a dance class he was teaching. Was it love at first sight? “It was something at first sight! I remember thinking ‘Woah’.” As well as baby Micah, they have a two-year-old daughter, Rose.
He’s carved out a niche as a talent show judge, but insists he’ll never be a crowd-pleasing ‘Mr Nasty’. “I treat other people as I would want to be treated; I’m just constructive and honest.”
A favourite Diversity moment was selling out the O2 Arena for the first time. “Before the crowd came in we stood on stage, looking at all the seats, going ‘all these people are coming to see us’. That was pretty cool, knowing we’d come from a little squashed studio to this.”
An edited version of this interview featured in Waitrose Weekend in March 2021 (c) Waitrose