Spinning balls with the Harlem Globe Trotters

posted by: Nick L | on: Friday, 18 April 2008, 11:14

Did I sleep last night? It certainly feels like I didn’t. Got to bed at half one this morning after finishing off the video of the day and then woke at half-five completely disorientated. By seven-thirty Ros and I were in the City FM radio studios plugging our tour.

Within an hour our bus was parked up in Williamson Square, where our event is taking place this lunchtime. We were joined by a couple of players from the Harlem Globe Trotters, who are in town to promote basketball. They told us about the racism experienced in their sport, with some clubs refusing to allow black players well into the 1950s. They were lovely blokes but I have to admit that I was expecting them to be a lot taller. The tricks of TV I guess!

I’m pleased that we started our tour in Liverpool. It is the Mirror heartland and has a proud history of opposing and rejecting fascism. The radio host told us that after the recent ACPO study, which revealed that newly arrived immigrants committed no more crimes than the rest of the population, they had a poll in which over 80% of listeners said that there was no link between immigrants and crime.

Anyway, must go. The drums are beginning to arrive and we need to find a power supply for the PA system.