I absolutely adored my father. I learned to read, sitting on my father’s knees with a newspaper in the morning. Our piano had rolls in it. This is the old-fashioned pianos and you could turn them on and they’d play the opera. So on a Sunday he’d put a roll on so we could listen to an opera. I always remember The Erl-King. That was always profound.

My mother was also mixed race. She had red-blonde hair and very pale. She’s very good-looking. Laughs.

On a Saturday afternoon, my mother would take my sister and I, Maxine, with her to Ivory Club and where she’d meet up with all her other ladies. Laughs. Or we’d be taken to the Institute of Jamaica and we’d see all the paintings.

My mother played the piano as well and taught us to play Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Debussy. And when my father died, I refused to go back for any more music lessons with my mother. She could not get me to sit down, I refused. I just thought it was just... It’s my dad always did things with me.

My father died when I was 12, and two years later my mother died. Yeah, it was very sad. So I was with my aunt and uncle, and they sent me to England. My uncle and his neighbour, Dr Carnegie, whose son was at Cambridge, and they decided it would be a very good thing for me to go and learn nursing. And I wondered, why wasn’t I being talked to about Cambridge? What’s all this nursing business? I’d love to have been an art critic. If I could just be left to go and see whenever the concerts were on, go and report on them. I’d love that.

Tilbury Docks, yes, that’s where I came in at. It was freezing. I’ve never been so cold in my life. And I went to Leicester College to do my A-levels and then I went into my nurse training when I was 18.

The nurse training was incredible because you learned how to clean, you learned how to talk to people who were sick, you learned about the body. Which is, it’s all very good stuff but it wasn’t my thing.

I used to criticise everything – laughs – and I remember one situation, they put us on the bedpan cleaning and my hands came out in a rash, because I’d never had to do anything like that in my life. And… I went and I complained to matron. And as a result of that, we all got gloves. So, you see, you should always do something about things. You shouldn’t just let it go on. Laughs.

After I graduated, I worked in Leicester for a couple of years, and I came to London and worked at different hospitals. Then the matron at Queen Square, she said, ‘There needs somebody good to work in the neurosurgical theatres at the Whittington Hospital.’ Would I like to go?

I did like the operating theatre. I thought this was more – more my scene. But there was a big government change about the grading of nurses. Some obscure person is going to be in charge of me and I thought, ‘No way, this is not right.’ I cannot have somebody who has no idea about what I do in the operating theatre be in charge of me.

That was it.

From there I left and went to the London School of Economics. I did social policy and administration, and then a postgraduate in personal management. At the LSE, volunteering is one of their big areas that they encourage students. So I volunteered. I started Rainbow Nursery. I chaired Blackliners for the HIV AIDS for 10 years. And I was also involved with Black Cultural Archives. I did all those projects, all at once, all at the same time. Laughs. I don’t know how I did it all and went to actual work and get paid for a job.

All my friends seemed to be at the BBC learning to be journalists. All of them from Sierra Leone. And we always had tickets. The Royal Opera House, we saw the ballet, Margot Fontaine, we never miss anything.

I was brought up in Jamaica where one went to concerts and there were people that looked like me playing the trumpets at the concert. There were people in bands. Black musicians was not new to me, that’s what I was growing up with. When I went to concerts in England, all I saw was white people with white hair. There weren’t any young people at any concerts. We thought, ‘God, they’ve got to have something better than this. Where are the musicians?’

Vida Menzies, a very grand Jamaican lady, living in England. She called me up because she knew I knew about music. She said, ‘There’s this Len Garrison, the founder of the Black Cultural Archives. He wants to put on some concerts.’ And he said he wanted Black composers featured on the South Bank. And I thought, ‘Well that sounds something up my street, I can help with that. Because I know how to do concerts.’
There was Chi-chi, who’s now started the Chineke! Orchestra. There was Shirley Thompson. They’re all famous now, I have to say. Finally, we have an orchestra that’s full of people who are not the same as in all the orchestras in this country. Or any country, if you ask me. So that they’ll get jobs, they’ll get work. And, you know, we’re not talking about having an orchestra that only has Black people in it. We’re talking about having an orchestra with all kinds of people in it.

When the article in The Guardian broke the scandal, I literally got up, got dressed, left, went down to BCA and said, ‘Right, what are we going to do about this? What are we going to do about this?’

The Windrush scandal is the Home Office scandal. It is not a Windrush scandal, because Windrush is the name of a boat. It is not the whole story. We managed, at the BCA – the Black Cultural Archives. We had the surgeries and the open house, got all the lawyers to the BCA. We have hundreds of people to apply for their status, to start with, then to apply for compensation. And that’s really what I got my CBE for.

I also received a letter from the Minister for Migration and Citizenship, Seema Malhotra, to thank me for the work that I’ve been doing, helping the Windrush victims. I was amazed because I don’t think they like me at the Home Office because I did too much over such a short space of time, and it hasn’t changed.

I love it in England, and I think of Brixton as home. It’s a great country. It is totally racist, but you just, just deal with it.

The thing is, you know, this – this discrimination. I was going to the Royal Opera House. I was going to the Southbank for concerts. You know, you turn up at these events and they wonder why you’re coming in. They don’t expect you to come to anything in these places. I just go in and I always dress well and I always look good. You try me. Just try me. Laughs.