June Sarpong

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June Sarpong

OBE
Born
June Konadu Sarpong

(1977-05-31) 31 May 1977 (age 46)
Newham, London, England
EducationConnaught School for Girls; Sir George Monoux College
OccupationTelevision presenter
RelativesSam Sarpong (brother)

June Konadu Sarpong

The Pledge. In November 2019, Sarpong was appointed as the BBC's first Director of Creative Diversity.[2]

Early life and education

Sarpong was born in Newham, London, to Ghanaian parents Thelma (née Amihere) and Samuel Sarpong.[3] She was educated at Connaught School for Girls in Leytonstone and Sir George Monoux College in Walthamstow.

Career

She began her media career with the radio station

Lily Savage's Blankety Blank (ITV).[4] As one of the female faces of Channel 4’s daytime teen-aimed strand T4 for nine years, she interviewed Tony Blair
for a T4 special, When Tony Met June, which aired in January 2005. She runs her own production company, Lipgloss Productions. Projects in development include a sitcom and a programme on climate change.

In recent years, Sarpong has presented other series, including

This Week. In 2006 she hosted ITV2's WAGs Boutique. Sarpong has also appeared on the third series of Bo' Selecta!
.

Sarpong appeared in the Extras Special Series Finale with Ricky Gervais (2007). On 22 October 2007 it was announced that she had quit her presenter role on T4 after nine years. Her last show was broadcast on 23 December 2007.

Sarpong made a guest appearance in Little Miss Jocelyn series 2, episode 3 (2008). On 6 November 2009 she hosted the Sky1 programme Michael Jackson: The Search for...His Spirit, in which she went around locations pertinent to Jackson's life looking for signs of his ghost. The programme was broadcast as part of a double bill, the second part comprising a live séance conducted by Derek Acorah, for which Sarpong again played host.

Sarpong worked as an interviewer on Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory show broadcast on TruTV.[5] On the first episode she made the claim that the 2004 Tsunami was not preceded by "pretremors or any warning". Journalist Peter Hadfield criticized this claim as being unsupported by seismological records and scientific papers.[6]

In late 2013, Elton John performed a variation of his 1970 hit "Your Song" with the amended lyrics "You can tell everybody 'You're June Sarpong'" as an apparent reference to an in-joke between the pair from a charity event earlier that year.[7]

After the "#WheresJuneSarpongGone" campaign begun by Celebrity Juice on 19 March 2015, Loose Women welcomed her to the panel as a guest panellist on 23 March. Following her first appearance back on screen, Sarpong appeared on Celebrity Juice, in Fearne Cotton's team, on 2 April.

After appearing alongside Ruth Langsford, Coleen Nolan and Janet Street-Porter on 23 March 2015, as a guest panellist, Sarpong later appeared as a guest panellist a further three times on 16 April, 17 April and 1 May. Since appearing on the programme again on 15 May, she became a regular panellist, initially as cover for Sherrie Hewson, while Hewson was filming Benidorm, later on 21 July 2015, Sarpong became a regular. She left the show in December 2016 and made 46 appearances in total.

On 7 January 2016, June made an emotional speech live on

Debatable on BBC Two
.

Since April 2016, June has made regular appearances on Sky News The Pledge.

She is the author of the books Diversify: Six Degrees of integration (2017), The Power of Women (2018), and The Power of Privilege: How white people can challenge racism (2020).

Advocacy

In August 2014, Sarpong was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.[8] In October 2015, she joined the board of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign, lobbying for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union.[9]

Personal life

Her older brother was Sam Sarpong, an actor and host of MTV's Yo Momma. He died on 26 October 2015 at the age of 40 after jumping off a bridge in Pasadena, California.[10]

Honours

Sarpong was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2007 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting and to charity[11] and Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting.[12]

References

  1. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  2. ^ Thorpe, Vanessa (25 July 2020). "June Sarpong: 'BBC gets a hard time but in some ways we're ahead on diversity'". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
  3. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 19 January 2018.
  4. ^ "Blankety Blank (1979–2016), Episode #16.18". IMDb. 27 May 2001.
  5. ^ "Disinformation Interviews June Sarpong of ‘Conspiracy Theory’", 7 February 2010.
  6. ^ "Conspiracy theories conspiracy". Youtube.com, 18 June 2013.
  7. ^ "EltonJohn.com".
  8. ^ "Celebrities' open letter to Scotland – full text and list of signatories | Politics". theguardian.com. 7 August 2014. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
  9. ^ "EU referendum: Lord Rose says it is 'patriotic' to remain in the EU". BBC Online. 12 October 2015. Retrieved 12 October 2015.
  10. ^ McRady, Rachel (28 October 2015). "Sam Sarpong Dies: Tommy Hilfiger Model, Yo Momma Host, Actor Dead of Apparent Suicide at 39". Us Weekly. Retrieved 28 October 2015.
  11. ^ "No. 58196". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 2006. p. 22.
  12. ^ "No. 62886". The London Gazette (Supplement). 28 December 2019. p. N14.

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