Baroness Floella Benjamin, whose extraordinary life story is retold in a new book for children, tells Emma Higginbotham about facing racism – and rising above.

For people of a certain age, the very mention of the name Floella Benjamin will likely stir up warm, fuzzy feelings.

A regular presenter of BBC’s Play School in the 70s and 80s, Floella’s trademark beads, bounciness and beaming smile lit up many a childhood – and her joie de vivre was contagious.

“I used to get letters from children saying ‘When I grow up I want to be just like you, Floella’, and they’d send me a photograph and they’d be blonde and blue-eyed, or ginger and freckled,” she says, laughing. “They didn’t see the colour of me! All they saw was the person on the screen who came into their lives and embraced them.”

Decades later, the mother-of-two is as treasured as ever. On her 71st birthday in September, a photo of Floella with a big bouquet of flowers and an even bigger smile went viral on Twitter, with more than 78,000 ‘likes’ and many thousands of affectionate messages.

Rewind to her childhood, however, and nobody had a single kind word to say to the little girl who, like so many others, had arrived in Britain from the Caribbean only to be met with appalling racism. It’s a tale she tells in a new picture book, Coming to England – An Inspiring True Story Celebrating the Windrush Generation.

“For children to understand about the world around them, it needs to start from a very young age,” she says, explaining why the book is aimed at three to five-year-olds. “It’s done in a gentle way, but they’ll see what happens when people don’t like you, and how you work towards believing in yourself.”

It’s a remarkable story. The second of six children, Floella had a blissful early childhood in the British crown colony of Trinidad. But when her parents joined around half a million other West Indians who came to the ‘motherland’ between 1948 and 1970 to fill post-war job vacancies, everything changed.

The four oldest children were left behind until their parents could afford to send for them. Floella and her sister Sandra were sent to one set of foster parents, and the oldest two boys to another. Life for all of them became unspeakably hard.

In the book, Floella mentions her ‘wicked auntie’ without going into detail; in reality she and her sister Sandra were treated like slaves, forced to rise at 5am and do all the household chores before school, then again afterwards. They never received the letters, money and parcels sent by their mum. The two brothers had it even worse – they had to fight for food and sleep on the floor. It was 15 months before they were sent for. “Knowing that I was loved before my mum left me helped me get through it,” she says.

“About four years ago my brother Ellington burst out crying when he remembered something that happened to him back then. It all came out – imagine, a 66-year-old crying like that. That’s why I always say that childhood lasts a lifetime.”

After 15 months, the siblings finally set sail for Britain, arriving shortly before Floella’s 11th birthday in 1960. Life in chilly London was a shock. All eight of them lived in just one room of a shared house, and Floella quickly got used to being ignored at shop counters and bullied at school.

“The first time I was told to ‘go back’ and called horrible names, I didn’t know what it meant,” she recalls. “I asked my mum, what are they talking about? She started crying, and said that people are not going to like you because of the colour of your skin, and you had to be strong.”

The family’s early years were dogged by dreadful incidents. When her mechanic father earned enough money to buy a house, neighbours called the police as they stood waiting for a viewing. On another occasion, dog mess was pushed through their letterbox.

“I remember thinking ‘You don’t know me, why do you hate me?’,” recalls Floella. “I never cried when I was out, but I cried in bed at night, because it was absolutely relentless. Every day you walked down the street and you didn’t know who was going to spit at you, who was going to attack you, so it made your heart heavy and angry and hard. The only solace you could find was in the arms of your family.”

Eventually Floella realised she had two choices: “You can either resent the world because it’s horrible to you, or you can turn it around and make everybody feel happy.”

Taking the latter path has served her well. After a spell in West End musicals, where she met her stage manager husband, Keith, she auditioned for Play School in 1976 and became a television mainstay for many years.

“I was just there having fun and making sure everybody watching me was getting something out of it. There were only three channels, so you had millions of children all watching you at the same time. That’s why I think anyone from Play School is remembered so fondly.”

Since then, Floella has dedicated her life to making the world a better place for children and young people. She’s worked extensively with charities ranging from Barnado’s to BookTrust, and as Chancellor of Exeter University, famously hugged her graduates rather than shaking their hands.

“I used to tell them all to go out there and change the world. Make a difference. And everywhere I go I meet an Exeter graduate somewhere and they say ‘Chancellor! We’re changing the world for you!’ It just makes my life worthwhile.”

Her dedication has earned official recognition: not only is she a Baroness of the House of Lords but, as of March, a Dame.

“I’m Baroness Floella Benjamin DBE OBE DL. I’m titled out!” she laughs. “People tell me every day how much I influenced them. What a wonderful legacy – to know that you have inspired other people to make a difference.”

Yet even for a baroness, the ugly spectre of racism still lurks. “It’s tough being black, even today,” she says. “When they had the Brexit vote, somebody in a supermarket pushed their trolley into the back of my legs, and said ‘What are you still doing here?’ I couldn’t believe it! When I’m Floella, people say how much they love me, but if I’m just seen as a black woman, it’s different.

“You never get rid of the colour of your skin. You are always judged, even though people don’t know you,” she concludes. “But if you can practise contentment every day, it keeps you young, it keeps you happy and it also brings hope. And when you have hope in your life, you can overcome anything.”

:: Coming to England by Floella Benjamin, £12.99, is out now

An edited version of this interview appeared in Waitrose Weekend in October 2020 (c) Waitrose