Comedian Babatunde Aleshe is part of this year's I'm A Celebrity line-up, alongside, as has been well reported, Matt Hancock. We predicted big things for Aleshe last year so it is no surprise he is on the show. How long he will last remains to be seen though - there have already been reports in the tabloids that he pulled out of a terrifying mid-air challenge before he even got to the camp. He has admitted that he is scared of everything but that's not quite true, he's a stand-up comedian, the scariest job in the world
A longer version of this interview below from 2021 ran in the Evening Standard. You can read that here.
A year ago Babatúndé Aléshé was working for Transport for London in the customer services department. One of his tasks was answering complaints about the ventilation on the number 38 bus and drivers not stopping. He had been a comedian since he was seventeen but his career had not quite taken off. “It was a side hustle,” he jokes.
It is definitely no side hustle now. Since debuting with his friend, comic Mo Gilligan, on Celebrity Gogglebox in 2020 Aléshé has been increasingly in demand, appearing on projects as diverse as hip hop quiz Don’t Hate the Playaz and his own podcast about children’s authors, Mission Imagination. Let others placate disgruntled passengers. “Once I got Gogglebox. I was just like, You know what? I think I should leave...”
The upbeat 35-year-old has not been able to gig much during the pandemic, but that is all changing. He is due to host the Evening Standard’s Big Comedy Night at the Underbelly on September 7, introducing headliner Phil Wang, Jessica Fostekew, Huge Davies (not a mistake, his stage name really is “Huge”) and Evelyn Mok.
The aim of the show is to put a smile back on London’s faces, but there is already a broad grin on Aléshé’s visage, even if I only see it briefly. When we meet in a Soho bar after he has just been doing a try-out for a voiceover he opts to keep his mask on: “I’ve got so much work I can’t risk getting ill.”
He is a gifted, engaging stand-up with real presence. Modest too. He puts his current success down to Mo Gilligan: “Yeah, I would not be anywhere without Mo. That’s just the truth. Mo has helped a lot of people.” Gilligan has shown that there is a massive market for comedy from people of colour. “It’s a healthy situation at the moment with lots of people coming up.”
Aléshé is right. Comedians that used to play the ‘urban’ circuit, such as Slim and Eddie Kadi, at venues such as the Hackney Empire and the Camden Centre, are now getting wider exposure, while comics such as Nabil Abdulrashid and Daliso Chaponda have broken through via Britain’s Got Talent. The landscape is changing and for the better.
Gilligan’s rapid rise has shown others the way, says Aléshé. “We were hidden but absolutely killing it. Now we’ve just started to hit up the mainstream. I think we just got we grew tired of speaking to the same audience. But we also knew that comedy is comedy.”
Aléshé doesn’t think the British comedy circuit is prejudiced though: “Not in my generation. It wasn’t because they were keeping us out. I think it just took someone to actively go there and achieve status. It’s not that we were held back, we just weren’t actively doing it.”
It has not all been a smooth ride though. Last year there was controversy when the Mirror online mistakenly published a picture of Aléshé and Gilligan sharing pizza and laughs on their Gogglebox sofa with a caption that said the picture featured KSI and S-X from the show. It was a genuine error, not malicious – Mirror online later issued an apology – but it aroused strong feelings.
Gilligan tweeted about it and the caption was amended. “Mo reacted correctly. And I applaud him for that. What I will say is people have to do better. I mean, me and KSI and S-X – we don’t look alike. So it was ridiculous that that happened. However, they got corrected. Move on.”
His father was a Muslim but his mother brought him up to be Christian and clearly had the biggest influence on him, living up to every inch of the strict Nigerian matriarch stereotype. He grew up in Tottenham where she laid down the law and it worked: “I’m still scared of her!”
As a teenager he went to church and avoided trouble. “On my estate we were surrounded by gangs. The streets are almost like being in the jungle. There’s a lion over there. And you’re like a deer, but you learn how to coexist in the same space. So a lot of us don’t cross that line. The minute you cross that line…”
Could it have gone the other way? “No. I’m afraid of dying. I think some people are desperate for love and they hope to get it from gangs. I got it from my mum. Once you get involved in stuff like that it only goes one way. Someone is getting beaten up or stabbed.”
He recently moved out to leafier Hertfordshire. He jokes that property prices and the prospect of a garden were the reasons, but he also didn’t want his son, now five, to grow up facing the kind of prejudice he encountered.
The interview takes an interesting turn here. As someone born and bred in London I’ve always felt the city was one of the most tolerant places in the UK. He disagrees: “Try getting on a train as a black man. Nobody will sit next to you until it is the last seat available. Trust me.”
After a moment of seriousness he laughs again. He has to get the train back home. It’s not too far, which is useful as he will be heading to London regularly in the future. For the Standard’s Big Comedy Night and for more filming. There has even been talk of a Gogglebox tour. Put those sofas onstage and enjoy Aléshé and Gilligan banter about their fear of horror films.
He might be used to hearing complaints in his previous job, but he certainly has no complaints about how his comedy job is going.
Babatunde Aleshe Picture: ITV1
