Latest news with #Bakare
Daily Mirror
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Doctor Who fans will recognise guest star Ariyon Bakare from other major shows
Doctor Who is set to welcome a new guest star in the form of Ariyon Bakare, who has previously appeared in a number of popular shows. WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Doctor Who. Doctor Who is in full swing, with actor Ariyon Bakare set to join the cast in episode five, The Story and the Engine. Doctor Who has been a cornerstone of BBC programming since its original launch in the 1960s, and its revival in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston at the helm. Fast forward two decades, and Ncuti Gatwa has taken up the mantle as the 15th Time Lord, ready to embark on his latest adventure this evening, Saturday, May 10. In this episode, the Doctor finds himself in Lagos, where he encounters a "mysterious figure called the Barber" who holds sway over the Nigerian city. The character of the Barber will be brought to life by actor Ariyon Bakare, a familiar face from several popular shows. Bakare, 53, is perhaps most recognised for his role as Dr Ben Kwarme in the BBC medical drama Doctors, a part he played for four years before leaving the show in 2005. Before his departure, his character Ben had assaulted a burglar, who subsequently pressed charges for grievous bodily harm. Ben was ultimately acquitted, prompting him to leave Letherbridge and embark on travels with his son Nathan. However, Doctors isn't the only series that Doctor Who fans might recognise Bakare from. Bakare has an impressive array of roles under his belt, including his turn as Adrian Scott in Family Affairs, taking the helm as Chief Superintendent Burridge in Thirteen, embodying Ligur alongside former Doctor Who lead David Tennant in Good Omens, and stepping into the fantastical world as Carlo Boreal in BBC's His Dark Materials. His diverse acting resume extends to Netflix's Too Close, alongside on-screen appearances in Crossfire, Karen Pirie, Carnival Row, Black Ops, and sharing the screen with Fear the Walking Dead star Lennie James in BBC's Mr Loverman. A peep at his IMDb profile reveals Bakare's next big project: the action-packed drama The Bleeding Ground. The tantalising preview states: "In the heart of the Niger Delta, a local man's quest for justice collides with the ambitions of an oil executive, igniting a battle that threatens to consume them both."
The Guardian
16-04-2025
- The Guardian
We Were There by Lanre Bakare review
Lanre Bakare's first book is not just a work of history – it is a necessary and urgent recalibration of the way we think about Black Britain. Too often, mainstream accounts flatten the story, centring it on London, reducing the complexities of life beyond the capital to footnotes. Bakare, a Guardian arts and culture correspondent, challenges this myopia head-on, presenting an expansive, deeply researched work that insists on a broader, richer understanding of Black life. He travels to Bradford, Cardiff, Birmingham and Edinburgh, pulling together art, politics and social movements, with a vision of community life in the 70s and 80s that feels both urgent and long overdue. Bakare opens with northern soul, an unexpected starting point, since it's mostly associated with working-class white youth. But in tracing its rise and the spaces where it flourished – clubs, underground venues, dance halls – and giving voice to its Black devotees, he paints a deft portrait of the social tensions of the time. It's an approach he deploys throughout the book, using cultural moments to explore deeper historical currents. The story of George Lindo, for example, framed for robbery in 1978, is more than an individual tragedy – it is a devastating indictment of Britain's racialised criminal justice system. Readers may know Lindo's name from Linton Kwesi Johnson's poetry ('Dem frame up George Lindo up in Bradford town / But de Bradford blaks dem a rally round'); Bakare reintroduces him in full detail, making his wrongful imprisonment a stark reminder of historical continuities in abusive policing. In a chapter on Scotland, Bakare dismantles the fiction that racism was always an 'English disease', focusing on the 1989 murder of Axmed Abuukar Sheekh in Edinburgh by far-right football hooligans. The subsequent activism of the Lothian Black Forum, which pressured authorities to recognise the racial nature of the attack, becomes a pivot point in the country's anti-racist history. From Handsworth, Birmingham, we get a compelling account of how Rastafarians were demonised in Thatcher's Britain. Bakare traces the genealogy of these arguments to the 1950s, demonstrating the complicity of both the state and the press in shaping public fear. One of the book's strengths is that it reads less like a conventional history and more like a documentary, moving fluidly between historical events, cultural movements and personal narratives. The effect is pleasantly cinematic, as if each chapter is an episode in a larger series about resilience and resistance. The discussion of the first National Black Art Convention – featuring figures such as Marlene Smith, Donald Rodney, Claudette Johnson and Keith Piper – is a case in point. Bakare does not simply recount the event; he embeds it in the broader political and artistic scene, making clear its impact on modern art. What makes We Were There particularly relevant is the way it draws attention to the past's ongoing reverberations. A chapter on the Reno, Manchester's legendary nightclub, leads to a discussion of the Fifth Pan-African Congress, an event that remains crucial in global Black history but is barely acknowledged in Britain's national memory. Elsewhere, he draws a direct line from the Black Environmental Network – founded nearly 40 years ago by Julian Agyeman, a British-Ghanaian secondary school teacher from Hull who took his students on field trips to the Lake District – to today's Black-led environmental justice movements. This is history not as something distant and concluded, but still unfolding. Bakare's achievement has been to fill in at least some of the gaps and silences in the historical record, to put Black Britons back where they have always been. They were indeed there: in the countryside, in the nations and regions, in towns and cities, makers of culture and community – even if the popular imagination has tended to edit them out. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion We Were There: How Black Culture, Resistance and Community Shaped Modern Britain by Lanre Bakare is published by Bodley Head (£22). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
We Were There by Lanre Bakare review – the forgotten voices of black Britain
'It's so hard to create something when there has been nothing before,' the Trinidad-born Nobel laureate VS Naipaul once complained to me, referring to his work for the BBC World Service programme Caribbean Voices (1943-58). That sentiment, that each generation of black Britons believes themselves to be bold pioneers working in a vacuum, has persisted since the beginning of mass migration to this country. But what if the contributions of black Britons were not carelessly neglected, but rather, as Lanre Bakare identifies in his estimable first book, We Were There, a history that has been more purposely obscured? The roots of the current Black Lives Matter-fuelled renaissance of black artistic practice in Britain were established decades ago in the relatively under-reported past. Bakare focuses on the Thatcher era of the late 1970s and 80s, 'the most restive period in postwar history', when, he argues, modern black Britishness was forged. The Bradford-born author complicates and deepens this story by shifting attention away from London, writing with quiet enthusiasm and sharp intelligence about black communities, including those in Bradford, Wolverhampton, Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff and Edinburgh. He unearths forgotten stories of black participation in cultural movements such as northern soul, whose popularity coincided with the emergence of reggae sound systems in the 1970s. One such story is that of Steve Caesar, a Leeds-based teenage migrant from St Kitts and winner of the inaugural northern soul dance competition at Wigan Casino in 1974. 'Northern soul helped me find a sort of way of belonging,' says Caesar, and yet his story was excluded from the narratives of a movement historically cast as a white working-class phenomenon by music journalists. Building on the work of cultural historians such as Stuart Hall, Bakare champions advances made by social activists. These include grassroots campaigners who in 1979 overturned the miscarriage of justice suffered by Bakare's fellow Bradfordian George Lindo, imprisoned after he was framed by racist police for a robbery he did not commit. The toppling of the statue of the transatlantic enslaver Edward Colston in Bristol in 2020 was a very public reckoning with the city's toxic past. Bakare shows that this direct action had been rehearsed in Liverpool three decades earlier. In 1982, protesters tied a rope to the statue of the former Liverpool MP William Huskisson, who had links to the Atlantic slave trade, and dragged it to the ground. Bakare puts that toppling into the context of the riots in Liverpool 8 (Toxteth) the previous year. The violence was sparked by police brutality, neglect and the kind of prejudicial thinking expressed by Margaret Thatcher in the aftermath of the riots, which she characterised as the unlawfulness of young men 'whose high animal spirits' had 'wreak[ed] havoc' on the city. Bakare ably demonstrates the key disadvantage faced by black people – a lack of information about their predecessors. In my experience, the interventions and successes of our forebears have been cynically obscured, creating the impression that nothing had come before. This discontinuation has often followed short-term initiatives by white cultural gatekeepers who pat themselves on the back for their enlightenment, which only lasts until the novelty wears off and the next worthy group emerges to attract their attention. We Were There acknowledges the true tapestry of British culture by shining a light on committed activists/artists, such as the documentarian Bea Freeman, the producer of They Haven't Done Nothing, a film about the aftermath of the 1981 riots. But the publication of books about the forgotten cultural history of black Britons can only come about if commissioning editors recognise previous blind spots. We Were There bridges the gaps to missing links and admirably achieves what it sets out to provide: further evidence of 'Black people's influence on the UK'. If these stories are only shown in isolation, 'they can be dismissed as curiosities', writes Bakare, 'that don't alter our sense of what constitutes British culture'. We Were There: How Black Culture, Resistance and Community Shaped Modern Britain by Lanre Bakare is published by Bodley Head (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
Zawya
21-02-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Nigeria: Kwara govt commends organisations over support for women
The Kwara State Government has commended private organisations for their role in supporting technology and innovation in the state and Nigeria. Speaking at the graduation ceremony for 45 trainees of the Webfala Digital Skills for All Initiative (WDSFAI)'s 'Keeping Female in STEM' programme in Ilorin, the Special Assistant on Digital Innovations to the Kwara State Governor, Hon. Kayode Ishola, commended WDSFAI while he described STEM as the foundation of modern society. The governor's aide emphasised the need to encourage more women to participate in technology fields. 'Increasing female participation in STEM fields will not only bridge the gender gap but also contribute significantly to Nigeria's economic growth and technological advancement,' he said. He further encouraged the graduates to continually seek professional training and networking opportunities to advance their respective careers. Also speaking, the Executive Director of WDSFAI, Nafisat Bakare, who said that the programme is an initiative aimed to empower unemployed female graduates with relevant digital skills, added that the group is committed to bridging the gender gap in Nigeria's tech ecosystem. Bakare said that the graduates received four months of intensive training in either software development (backend), cybersecurity or data science, in addition to training in soft skills such as communication, teamwork, and branding. Related News Oluyole LG chairman convenes stakeholders' meeting on security, community relations Sokoto govt trains, empowers 500 women Key differences between iPhone 16, iPhone 16e 'Following the completion of their training, our fellows sat for professional examinations and thereafter proceeded on a three-month internship at various tech companies in the country, where they further honed their skills,' she added. Speaking further, she emphasised the importance of empowering young women with digital and STEM-related skills to enable them to compete effectively in the rapidly evolving technology industry, where she said women are underrepresented. She highlighted the persistent challenges women face in the sector and restated her organisation's commitment to bridging the gender divide in the tech industry by empowering more females through quality training and mentorship. 'Our mission is to ensure that more women and girls are not only introduced to STEM but also retained in the field, where they can build successful careers. The Keeping Female in STEM programme is designed to provide young women with the necessary digital skills, mentorship, and opportunities to thrive in the tech ecosystem,' Bakare said. She further called on stakeholders, including government agencies, private sector players, and educational institutions, to support initiatives aimed at empowering women in technology.
