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For 14 years he interviewed stars like Bob Marley and Muhammad Ali on the first black show in British broadcasting, then co-founded the Voice newspaper, helped save the Notting Hill carnival, and starred in the Teletubbies. But has his legacy been ignored?
Of all the places you might bump into Miss World, a bus to Finsbury Park is low on the list. But it was on the W2 in north London that Alex Pascall got one of his big breaks. “I heard a voice say to me: ‘Alex, wh’appen boy.’” When he looked up, Cindy Breakspeare, then the reigning Miss World and in a much-reported relationship with Bob Marley, was beaming back at him. Pascall had interviewed the former Miss Jamaica when she won Miss World.
Now he was a couple of years into his groundbreaking BBC radio show, Black Londoners, and he saw a chance to contact the reggae legend. “I said: ‘I need a real interview with Bob. Help me get it.’ She said: ‘No problem, man, just give me your number and I’ll call you.’” Before long, Marley was not only on the show, but having a historic on-air meeting with the “king of calypso”, Mighty Sparrow. “The two kings” of Caribbean music, as Pascall calls them, had never met before. “Boy, when Sparrow saw Marley, I can’t tell you how great it was to watch these two men hug each other. It was a great moment.” Continue reading...