Dotun Adebayo: Radio, Publishing and Black British Conversation

Lagos, Tottenham and the music press

Born in Lagos, Dotun Adebayo moved to Britain as a child and grew up in Tottenham. His route into journalism passed through theatre and university: he joined the National Youth Theatre, studied literature in Stockholm and graduated in philosophy from the University of Essex in 1987. Elected students’ union president, he left months later to take a job at The Voice. He spent four years as the newspaper’s music editor, writing for publications including NME and Melody Maker. His writing also appeared in Pride and New Nation, alongside national newspapers. Moving between these publications gave him several settings in which to develop a public voice. ¹

Nigeria remained part of his understanding of the media. In a 2013 interview with journalist Lekan Otufodunrin, Adebayo recalled that his father had worked as a newspaper features editor and then as a broadcaster. He also described returning to Nigeria in 1977 and writing plays for Bendel Playhouse on television. His experience therefore included making work for audiences in both countries. The relationship between them was personal and practical, sustained through writing, travel and an interest in the development of Nigerian broadcasting. ²

Building X Press

In 1992, Adebayo and fellow journalist Steve Pope co-founded X Press. The company addressed Black readers directly, making publishing another part of their work in the media. One of its defining books was Victor Headley’s Yardie, published by X Press in London that year. A small independent house was putting its name behind a novel that would become closely associated with Black popular fiction in Britain. ^{3, 4}

Yardie is a crime novel about a Jamaican newcomer, D, who takes a consignment of cocaine intended for others and sets himself up in London’s criminal underworld. The pursuit that follows supplies the story with its danger and momentum. The book’s later life extended far beyond its original publication: Pan issued a film edition in 2018, when Idris Elba directed its screen adaptation. For Adebayo’s publishing history, it remains a concrete example of backing a work that continued to find audiences across decades and media. ⁵

X Press also became a subject of serious literary discussion. Writing in Anthurium in 2006, critic Curdella Forbes examined the company’s attempt to reach readers outside the usual academic and literary constituencies. Its range complicated an easy division between popular entertainment and books considered worthy of study. The publisher’s work raised a practical question: what happens when the experiences, tastes and language of Black readers help determine the kinds of books that reach the market? Her essay examined Patrick Augustus’s Baby Father and Michael Maynard’s Games Men Play, considering fiction shaped by Caribbean connections and the everyday lives of Black people in Britain. ⁶

Classics, comics and new channels

The list extended beyond contemporary crime fiction. Forbes documented X Press’s reissues of work by writers including Mary Seacole, Zora Neale Hurston and Claude McKay, alongside children’s books and other strands of publishing. Older writing could reach readers through the same company that sold modern popular fiction. In Forbes’s analysis, the catalogue also made connections across the Caribbean, Britain and North America. Adebayo and Pope were participating in an international Black reading culture, even when particular books were rooted in a London neighbourhood. ⁶

Comics offered another way to reach an audience. Writer and artist Bobby Joseph has described meeting Adebayo and Pope in the 1990s and being given the opportunity to create Skank. He wanted to make comics about the people, music and street life around him in South London, at a time when he found few openings for creators of colour in the industry. Their publishing partnership gave him a place to develop that work. ⁷

Joseph brought together Black and Asian contributors, drawing on the satirical magazine format to create a platform for artists and writers who lacked established routes into print. His account of the collaboration identifies something specific about Adebayo’s contribution: publishing could make room for somebody else’s creative judgement. Providing a platform meant trusting a creator to recognise material and talent within his own community, and to build a publication around them. His collaborators included co-editors Danny F and Michael Robinson, alongside artists Gee Miah and Dee Lewis. The venture gave these creators a shared publication through which to develop their work and find readers. ⁷

Adebayo launched the internet television venture Colourtelly in 2007. When Essex named him its Alumnus of the Year in 2008, he credited university friendships with helping him find work, develop a business and make films. His acceptance speech acknowledged the connections through which a varied career had become possible. ¹

Choosing the overnight microphone

His own account of joining Radio 5 Live begins with a newspaper column. In July 1998, he appeared as a guest on Nick Robinson’s Late Night Live after a producer read something he had written for The Guardian. Further invitations followed. Editor Marina Salandy-Brown then asked him to present Brief Lives, an obituary programme made with producer Lesley McAlpine. The work involved finding a life story within the news of somebody’s death. ⁸

When controller Bob Shennan offered him an opportunity to stand in for Simon Mayo in the afternoon, Adebayo asked instead about Up All Night. He already knew the overnight magazine programme as a listener and liked its pace and international outlook. He began deputising alongside Anita Anand and went on to work with its creator, Rhod Sharp. The overnight slot was a deliberate choice, suited to the kind of broadcasting he wanted to do. ⁸

In 2020, Adebayo moved from weekend to weekday overnights following Sharp’s departure. The announcement scheduled him for the early hours from April, while he continued his Sunday evening work on BBC Radio London. Controller Heidi Dawson singled out his understanding of what radio meant to people listening at that time. It was recognition of an established relationship with an audience whose listening hours fell outside the daytime schedule. Overnight broadcasting depends on the quality of the company it offers its listeners. ⁹

Looking back on the pandemic, Adebayo described callers seeking conversation during lockdown and recalled the programme receiving hundreds of calls a night. He regarded that contact as one of the station’s most important achievements during the period. ⁸

A world of football and music

The World Football Phone-In gave his broadcasting another international dimension. His conversations with football journalist Tim Vickery brought knowledge from beyond the domestic game into the overnight programme. In a 2020 Football Ramble interview with Andy Brassell, Adebayo discussed how football had helped him find his place after arriving in Britain from Nigeria. Brassell had himself developed as a broadcaster through the phone-in. The programme brought experienced specialists and newer contributors into a shared conversation, with football providing a subject around which people in different countries could meet. The interview also ranged across his experiences of Sunday-league football in Sweden and his concern about racist behaviour in European grounds. Sporting conversation could therefore include the experience of participation and exclusion, alongside the game itself. ¹⁰

Its influence can be seen in the response when Covid restrictions interrupted the programme in 2020. World Football Index, an outlet whose contributors had appeared on the phone-in, began making unofficial programmes to occupy the gap. Its first featured Simon Edwards, Vickery and Felipe Cardenas discussing Colombia’s 1994 World Cup team. Further episodes explored other matches and national football histories. The producers explicitly acknowledged the BBC programme as an influence. ¹¹

This was a community of listeners and contributors capable of creating something together when a familiar meeting place disappeared. The replacement was independent of the BBC, but it drew on relationships and interests that had developed around Adebayo’s programme. Its existence demonstrated that the audience’s attachment extended beyond receiving results or hearing predictions. People valued the exchange itself and wanted somewhere to continue it. ¹¹

Music offered a related form of participation through the Virtual Jukebox on Up All Night. A 2016 programme with writer Daniel Rachel invited listeners to help choose an addition to the show’s music collection. The invitation gave the audience an active part in the selection. A favourite recording could become the beginning of a discussion, with the presenter and guest responding to listeners’ choices. The format connected Adebayo’s background in music journalism with the possibilities of live radio: specialist knowledge could open a conversation in which the audience had knowledge of its own to contribute. ¹²

Community radio and the arts

Adebayo’s relationship with community broadcasting also developed through BBC Radio London. In October 2023, the BBC announced that his Sunday evening programme would be heard across the local radio network from the following month. The show would cover community issues around the UK and be presented from London. Adebayo welcomed the opportunity to discuss concerns that mattered to those audiences. The change came within a wider restructuring of local radio, in which many individually produced programmes were replaced by shared output. ¹³

Alongside the new network programme, the BBC said it would retain 20 community programmes across 33 local stations, with Monday evening programmes focused on Asian communities and Friday evenings on African-Caribbean communities. These arrangements show the different kinds of audience being addressed within the same service. Adebayo’s shared show could take community concerns to listeners elsewhere, while the continuing local programmes remained more closely connected with particular places. The restructuring made the balance between those functions part of the context in which his programme operated. ¹³

His commitment to the arts also took an organisational form in Tottenham. He chaired the Bernie Grant Arts Centre from 2018 to 2023. When his appointment was announced, he spoke about his childhood connection with the area and the talent that still needed opportunities to develop there. The centre already knew him as a performer of his own work. Joining its board meant taking responsibility for the conditions in which other artists could work, beyond his own appearances on stage or radio. ^{14, 15}

History within reach

Adebayo has also argued for greater attention to history within living memory. In a contribution to Black History Month in 2017, he recalled visiting West Green Primary School in Tottenham as a guest. His material came from his own childhood at a nearby school: rivalries, bullying and an incident he had witnessed. He wanted the children to recognise connections between an ordinary remembered experience and wider questions about race and belonging. ¹⁶

The piece was impatient with the idea that Black history belonged only to distant figures. People who were alive could explain what they had seen and experienced, and children could begin to understand history through places they knew. It was an argument for taking everyday memory seriously. His school visit placed the storyteller close to his listeners, with a shared neighbourhood providing the starting point for a difficult subject. ¹⁶

His outlook also remained wider than Britain. In the 2013 interview about Nigeria, Adebayo expressed a desire to participate in its growing broadcasting industry and described following Nigerian newspapers from the UK. For him, professional interests and cultural attachments crossed national borders. A career established in British media could still look towards audiences and colleagues elsewhere, with another country’s conversations remaining close enough to join. ²

Sources

1. University of Essex — Alumnus of the Year 2008: Dotun Adebayo.

2. Media Career Services — Interview with Dotun Adebayo: I want to be part of the broadcast media explosion in Nigeria.

3. Turnaround Publisher Services — The X Press.

4. Open British National Bibliography — Yardie, Victor Headley, X Press, 1992.

5. Pan Macmillan — Yardie by Victor Headley.

6. Anthurium — Curdella Forbes, X Press Publications: Pop Culture, Pop Lit and Caribbean Literary Criticism, 2006.

7. Down the Tubes — An interview with Bobby Joseph, 2024.

8. RadioToday — BBC Radio 5 Live at 30: Dotun Adebayo looks back, 2024.

9. RadioToday — Dotun Adebayo moves to weeknights on BBC Radio 5 Live, 2020.

10. Football Ramble — Ramble Meets… Dotun Adebayo, 26 February 2020.

11. World Football Index — World Football Phone-In: World Football Index Podcast, 2020.

12. Daniel Rachel — BBC 5 Live Up All Night: Virtual Jukebox, 16 July 2016.

13. RadioToday — Dotun Adebayo to host new show across BBC local radio network, 2023.

14. Bernie Grant Arts Centre — Announcing the appointment of Dotun Adebayo as chair.

15. Bernie Grant Arts Centre — Geoffrey Williams announced as new chair, confirming Adebayo’s 2018–2023 tenure.

16. Black History Month — Dotun Adebayo’s account of visiting West Green Primary School, 2017.