Tayo

It’s always a pleasure to bump into the ever-lovely, ever-photogenic Tayo Aluko. He’s appeared in this journal on a number of occasions but I haven’t seen him for quite some time, for all the obvious reasons.

I ran into him today at a work event. An actual ‘in real life’ event (still very much a rarity for me), run by Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance, and aimed at raising Black men’s awareness about prostate cancer. Did you know that whilst 1 in 8 of all British men will have prostate cancer, the figure for men of African or African-Caribbean heritage is 1 in 4?

I was on the steering group for the event, although only in a very minor way, and I’m pleased to say that it went really well, was well-attended and encouraged lots of conversation. On a more practical note, there were medics on hand to do PSA tests for the attendees - which many availed themselves of. Covid jabs were also available on site. And several people signed up with local GPs too. Not a bad day’s work.

Tayo (singer, writer, actor, architect) is currently working on his third play which is about the life and work of the Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Coleridge-Taylor and which I’m very much looking forward to seeing.

Meantime, here are Sheku Kanneh-Mason (Cello), Isata Kanneh-Mason (Piano), and Braimah Kanne-Mason (Violin) playing Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s arrangement of the spiritual, ‘Deep River’ https://youtube.com/watch?v=v_KMY_D9W4M