Una Marson: The incredible life of the first black woman to work at the BBC

Powerful, edgy, irreverent telly, watched by an entire generation hungover in their pyjamas, Sarpong and her co-hosts – the likes of Vernon Kay and Steve Jones, all still broadcasting legends – would grill celebs in the gaps around a Friends episode and the Hollyoaks omnibus.

“There were all sorts of sketches on that show that you definitely couldn’t do now,” she says, cackling raucously. “I think we got close to being cancelled a couple of times back then! I can only imagine what would happen if that were today.”

Sarpong, 47, was a prodigy, starting out on radio at 16 and by 19, she was on TV. “It’s funny, Vernon and I were talking about it recently. We were all so young,” she says.

“People say, ‘Oh my God, you were part of my youth,’ and they don’t realise we were more or less the same age as our audience. It’s just, none of us went to university! We went straight on air.”

Calling her time on T4 “such a gift”, she reckons the show was probably only possible during the early Noughties. “There aren’t many shows like that, and there certainly hasn’t been another one like it since,” she says with pride.

Now we’re obsessed with looking back at that time, whether it’s the fashion (baggy jeans have returned) to a slew of documentaries exploring Nineties and Noughties boy band culture, like Boybands Forever on BBC, and Sky series No Matter What, looking at the rise and fall of Boyzone.

“That was my era,” buzzes Sarpong, who grew up in Walthamstow, London, born to Ghanaian parents.

“I’m so glad to be Gen X. We had the best time. How lucky for my generation, to be old enough to remember life before the internet, before the digital revolution, but still young enough to be able to adopt it. And at a time when music was so exciting.

"I was so lucky to be part of that, to be interviewing all those bands. It was a resurgence of British music, Blur, Oasis, even the Spice Girls.”

Arguably though, a lot of it, by today’s standards and post #metoo, was quite problematic. Duty of care barely existed and there were certain behaviours women were largely expected to just put up with.

“Thank God it’s being talked about now, right? I mean, back then nobody considered any of that stuff,” says Sarpong.

“I never really thought about it. I was very lucky. I think the reason I never considered it was because we were looked after. We had amazing producers. People often forget that Andi Peters created T4.

"Because he’d been a television presenter himself, the way the production was set up was very nurturing of the talent.”

There were also day-to-day aspects of British life that seem unimaginable today. “I look back at FHM, ladette culture, Loaded and that was so normal,” recalls Sarpong.

In her early 30s she left T4 and moved to America for work, and remembers coming home a few months later and re-seeing Page 3.

“When I was living here, I was desensitised to it. Coming back, I was just so confused, like, Oh, you’re having coffee and your morning cornflakes and here’s a woman with her bosoms out! Like wow,” she says, erupting into laughter again.

We’re talking today because Sarpong is passionate about “creating balanced, safe space for interesting, sensible conversations,” be it around diversity, inclusion, women’s rights or the workplace.

Hence why she has launched a new imprint, Akan Books, to champion overlooked and underappreciated voices – starting with Una Marson, a contemporary of Orson Welles and the first black female broadcaster and producer to work at the BBC, where Sarpong later became the broadcaster’s first Director of Creative Diversity.

“The main reason I wanted to tell her story was, I couldn’t believe I had never heard of her,” says Sarpong, who’s written Calling Una Marson with Jennifer Obidike.

“She was a woman that refused to be limited by her times. She lived in an era where black people were not seen as human, let alone capable.

"And she defied all the odds – at a great cost – but she did and she was able to do things that would be considered extraordinary by anybody, at any time in history,” says Sarpong.

“She was in London where children were spitting at her and chasing her down the street, that was her everyday experience. And so to have been dealing with all of that and still achieve all that she did, it’s just remarkable.

“And she was fun! She had a sense of humour, she was witty, she was brilliant, but she was complicated.

" She was a wonderful person to be around, but she could also be very difficult,” she adds, laughing loudly.

“At a time where it was all about the cause – whether the feminist movement or the black liberation movement – Una was also petty and jealous of other women! We like that complication and that contradiction. It made her human.”

Jamaican-born Marson faced many challenges and sacrificed a lot for her career, going against her Christian upbringing and the expectation that she’d marry and have children.

Sarpong has faced her fair share of career challenges too.

“That’s probably why I resonated and connected with Una, but obviously I can’t compare anything I’ve experienced with what she went through. It’s night and day,” she says.

“But I do think we’re at a really interesting crossroads in that, thank goodness, there are now more women in positions of power.

"Obviously, not enough, but there are more, and we also have way more male allies looking at these issues, and many more men who actually want to be at home with the family as well.”

She hopes that no matter someone’s background, Marson’s story shows that “anyone can defy the odds.

Whatever the odds are in your own life, you do not have to be constrained by other people’s views of what somebody like you can achieve,” she says.

“I think it cuts across the board. Everybody has been told no at some point in their lives, whoever you are, and Una proves that sometimes, you can turn those nos in yeses.”

Calling Una Marson: The Extraordinary Life of a Forgotten Icon by June Sarpong and Jennifer Obidike is published in hardback by Akan Books, priced £20 (ebook £9.99).