He has brought Black, gay and working-class experiences to a massive audience – as writer and director of countless plays and films, and creator of the pioneering TV show Metrosexuality
Rikki Beadle-Blair was just 15 when he caught the attention of a film director. It was 1976 and the Bermondsey Lamp Post, the experimental, anarchic south-east London free school he attended, had financially collapsed and been shut down. With little to occupy him, he began writing and producing plays in the streets where he lived.
Bugsy Malone had recently been released at the cinema, and Beadle-Blair thought it would be perfect for a big neighbourhood production. Today, the writer and director of the pioneering Channel 4 show Metrosexuality can look back on a career that includes writing six films, directing three more and writing and directing more than 40 plays. But back in the 1970s, he was advertising his show in shop windows and asking local children and other teenagers to audition. “What was great about Bugsy Malone,” he says, “was that it was a multiracial film. So it encouraged a multiracial turnout.”
