‘I think we do some good, but don’t paint me as some sort of saint or role model’

He laughs now (and also laughed then) about the weird experience of walking in the charity’s London headquarters on his first morning, to be told that not only was he about to do an interview with Radio 4’s Today programme, but an appointment had been made for him to go to Kensington Palace to talk the Princess out of dropping her work with Centre Point. This was around the time of the break-up of the Waleses’ marriage, and she had already announced that she intended to scale back the number of charities she worked with.

The new boss was left under no illusion by the team that it was vital he should persuade her not end her association with Centre Point, extinguishing the important spotlight she attracted to its work with homeless young people all over the country.

“It was potentially the equivalent of walking in and falling over into a cream pie,” says Adebowale. “The chances were that I was going to get something all over my face. There was no point in panicking. In fact, I laughed, then went off and did it. I knocked on the door of the Palace, and was met by her butler Paul Burrell. I asked him how I should handle it, and he said, ‘Just be yourself’.

“I sat down with her and had a chat. She was lovely. I told her that the room we were in was just like my living room, and she liked that. We hit it off, had a laugh and she decided to stay on, which was lucky for me.” Sticky episode with whipped cream and nasty custard avoided, then, and the working relationship with the Princess endured until her death in 1997.

Adebowale, or – to give him his Sunday title – Baron Adebowale of Thornes, the area of Wakefield where he was born and grew up, is one of those people you know is on his way before he actually arrives. His distinctive, ready laugh and happily undiluted Wakefield accent herald his coming. It’s easy to imagine him disturbing the odd slumbering member of the House of Lords, although he is protective of the chamber to which he was welcomed as one of the first People’s Peers in 2001, in recognition of his work among some of the country’s neediest people and for the mark he had made on social housing.

He likes giving talks about the House of Lords, particularly to school children. “They’re always interested, because it’s is a mystery to them, and they think it’s full of old people who fall asleep. I think it’s important to say that I am a member of the Lords who did not go to public school, nor Oxford or Cambridge. I’m not rich and clearly not white.

“I explain that it can’t stop laws but can delay them and amend them, and although I don’t go every day, I think it’s good use of my time when I do because it’s about voting on the things you understand and speaking whenever you feel you can make a difference.” Lately he’s been much in evidence, sticking in his two penn’orth during debates on the Health and Social Care Bill.

He may not be the first black man to enter the Lords, but he and the few who went before him are the exceptions that prove the rule.

“I don’t set myself up as a role model for anyone. I do what I think is both interesting and rewarding to me, personally and professionally, and I’m lucky to work with some very talented people in a job that’s tough for everyone. I think we do some good and my career has been about doing things that matter to me... but don’t paint me as some sort of saint or role model.”

I won’t then. He does concede, though, that if he had had someone like his older self around when he was 12 or 13 – rather than a black bloke who was prominent because of his skill at running, music or stand-up comedy – life would have been easier. “It if helps some young kid who’s struggling to see that what’s possible then I’ll have done something worthwhile.”

When Victor, now 49, was a teenager at school in Wakefield, he got used to the flashes of racism in the playground and around a town where there were few ethnic minority families. He skates over the detail, and is loath to spell out too much of what he has called the “casual racism” suffered by his highly-qualified Nigerian parents Ezekiel and Grace, a young head teacher and midwife, who moved to Britain lured by promises that they would be welcome and their future bright.

Ezekiel tried repeatedly and failed to get into medical school here despite his strong academic record, didn’t manage to get an equivalent teaching post either, and worked in a succession of other jobs. Grace, who already had the same qualifications for nursing and midwifery as were demanded here back in the early 1960s, was told she must qualify again – which she did while working in a factory.

“It was the time of ‘no dogs, no blacks, no Irish’, and there were clear barriers to young ambitious black people,” says Adebowale.

“People with the surname Adebowale didn’t get into medical school unless they were sponsored by someone very high up in clinical practice.” Sadly, Victor’s father died “a thwarted man”, although his four children have done all right for themselves.

“Thank god we don’t live in the 50s or 60s, because I probably wouldn’t be here (in this job) if that were the case.”

Adebowale says he embraced the difference between himself and his schoolmates. Realising it was okay to be different both made him stronger and gave him confidence. During a degree in applied biology at North East London Polytechnic he became less interested in biology and increasingly fascinated by the whys and wherefores of poverty.

His own difficulty in finding somewhere affordable to live despite there being plenty of social housing lying empty helped to to kick-start his career in the housing sector, as an estate manager with Newham Council at a time when blacks and other ethnic minorities were being given accommodation, if at all, in the least desirable places by some London boroughs.

“I became a housing bore,” he says, also describing himself as obsessive, focused and driven. “Not a good combination, maybe, but I met people like me, and in time we created the largest housing co-operative in Europe, putting empty properly into use. Out of that came several housing associations, and we learned so much about running organisations, how to obtain government grants, and at the same time housing many people and hopefully treating them fairly.”

The kind of accepted pre-Race Relations Act racism that lingered in places was dealt with by evicting repeat perpetrators. There was a strong overlap with social work when, for example, the team had to rehouse and organise support for victims of domestic abuse.

Various jobs in housing and as director of the Alcohol Recovery Project in London led to Centre Point, the not-for-profit social enterprise Turning Point, which lies between private and public sectors and competes for government contracts to provide health and social care services. He is a member of or chairs several social policy groups and advisory panels, and strongly believes government needs to give more psychological and other support to help the longer-term unemployed stay “job ready”.

During his 10 years at Turning Point, whose Yorkshire projects include residential services for women with complex mental health needs and a young people’s housing project in Sheffield for those at risk of becoming homeless, the demand for such services has grown, says Victor. Yet those affected by poverty or other social and/or health needs are often seen as the guilty party.

“Everyone understands there’s a moral reason for working with poor people and policy makers will say ‘we must focus on them first’, but the reality is that they don’t. I’m interested in why not – and in the subtext of the debate that says if we did look after the poor properly there would be no incentive for them to struggle and work like the rest of us.”