Rikki Beadle-Blair

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Screenshot of Rikki Beadle-Blair, possibly from Metrosexuality, 2001

Rikki Beadle-Blair was born in 1962, in Bermondsey, south London. He is a British actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, singer, songwriter of West Indian origin.

He was brought up by his single mother, Monica Beadle (born 1944), a counsellor and unionist who was also gay. She was born in Jamaica and moved to Britain when she was 12. She was the first black child in her school in Peckham.

When she was pregnant with Rikki at the age of 16 her mother had just died and her sister was throwing her out into the street. Rikki was brought up with a brother, Gary, 4 years younger, and a sister, Carleen, 8 years younger. He attended Lois Thompson's Experimental Bermondsey Lampost Free School. He wrote his first play aged 7 and started directing aged 11.

The BBC current affairs television programme, Nationwide, made a documentary about him when he was a child performer in Bermondsey, south London, in the 1970s.

When he was 17 he did a capella concerts at the Gay's The Word bookshop in Bloomsbury, London. At this time he was also going to gay pubs and clubs and was involved with the Gay Liberation Front (GLF).

He was subsequently a dancer, a cabaret artist, a rock musician, an actor, a choreographer, and a director. He has performed worldwide, and has written plays for BBC Radio 4 and Channel 4 television. He was proud of his performance in the early 1990s in the film Sirens in which he played Blue, a punky Scouse heroin junkie.

Metrosexuality, DVD cover. Beadle-Blair is in the middle with the blond dread locks

In 1994, he wrote the screenplay for Nigel Finch's film Stonewall, about the Stonewall Rebellion. This won the audience award at the London Film Festival and the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay film festival.

In 2001 he adapted Boy George's autobiography Take It Like A Man for a BBC film.

In March 2001, he wrote, produced, and directed the Channel 4 television series Metrosexuality in which he also played a lead role. This greatly improved his profile.

The same year, he hosted the Big Up Yourself And Be Proud show at The Brixtonian during Mardi Gras Festival in aid of GMFA, a London based gay men's health charity whose Big Up innitiative (targeting black men), he is supporting.

In 2002, his documentary Roots of Homophobia, for BBC Radio 4 won the Sony Radio Academy Awards for Best Radio Feature. There he brings his own experience as a gay black man to inform his investigation into homophobic attitudes in Jamaican pop music.

He is also an executive writer in the second season of the US TV series Noah's Arc and is a director for the South African organisation for first time filmmakers Out of Africa.

Rikki has recently taken up photography. He has written songs for Kevin Marques. His Theatre company, Angelica, is resident at the Trisan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden, London.

[edit] Plays

His plays include:

Stonewall (2005) - stage adaptation of the BBC film
Bashment (2005) - explores the controversy around dancehall reggae music and the consequences of homophobic lyrics
Totally Practically Naked In My Room On A Wednesday Night (2005) - a night in the life of 17 year old Dylan, desperate to lose his virginity.
the South London Passion Plays trilogy (Gutted, Laters and Sweet) (2004)
Captivated (1997) - the story of a gay black man imprisoned for murder. Shane corresponds with an Asian pen pal who writes him as a act of charity. Shane’s self-hatred turns into a soul-searching journey from cockiness to agonized self-reflection, and finally ultimate gratitude for his unseen friend.
Human - Two terminally ill cancer patients get together for a final riotous love affair.
Prettyboy
Gunplay
Wild At Heart (1988)