Craig David has claimed the impersonation of him on TV sketch show Bo’ Selecta! was “racist” and forced him to leave the country.
Bo‘ Selecta!, which ran on Channel 4 from 2002 to 2009, was a hit series based on celebrity caricature. David was the subject of numerous sketches alongside other superstars including David Beckham and Mel B.
At the time the singer laughed off the rubber-masked character, which depicted him wearing a colostomy bag and repeating catchphrases based on his lyrics such as "When I say ‘Bo’, you say ‘Selecta’."
However, the 41-year-old has now revealed he moved to Miami in 2009 to “get away physically from the David who everyone thought wore a colostomy bag and had a big rubber face and gigantic chin”.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, David accused the show’s creator Leigh Francis of “bullying” and pointed out that a number of characters on the show had him “putting blackface on”.
He said: “Every sketch felt personal. It felt like a vendetta and when it got a following, it became something that affected me. People would shout at me on the street and I felt the same feeling I had when I was bullied at school.
“Leigh Francis had normalised bullying by making it comedy. It was bullying across the board for everyone. When he put blackface on, that was being racist.”
Francis apologised for the black masks he wore on the show in 2020, but David said he doubted the sincerity of the apology.
He added: “We can all apologise when on the back foot. Has he reached out to any of the people he did on his show? He hasn’t reached out to me. Has he gone to communities to talk about bullying? Racism? And to be educated? You can only ask him.
“All I’ve seen since his apology is people still tweeting him thinking Bo’ Selecta! is fun and the tone of his response being very much still, ‘I’m the funny guy here’. That he still plays it like a joke after his apology tells me everything.”
Representatives for Leigh Francis have been contacted for comment.
