Page 56 - Powerlist 2020

Profiles

Ade Adepitan MBE
TV presenter and Paralympic wheelchair
basketball player

From sport to TV presenting and documentary film-making,
Ade makes a huge success of everything he does.
He was struck with polio at a young age, but despite
being left with a disability, went on to become a medal-
winning basketball player. He took part in the Sydney 2000
Paralympics, grabbed a bronze at the Athens Olympics
in 2004 and gold at the 2005 Paralympic World Cup in
Manchester. He has more than 90 caps for Great Britain.
He has co-hosted Children In Need alongside Tess Daley
and others since 2016 and fronted coverage of the 2016
Rio Paralympics and the Invictus Games. He also continues
to present the BBC Travel Show which has a global audience
of 80 million.
Ade doesn’t shy away from complex issues. His powerful
film for Channel 4’s Unreported World, Vietnam’s Toxic
Legacy, has had more than 10million views. He also
investigates controversial and ground-breaking stories for
Channel 4’s award-winning documentary series Dispatches,
including an episode confronting the UK benefit system’s
personal disability allowances.
Other documentary work includes Ade Adepitan: Journey
of my Lifetime, which saw him return to Nigeria, the place of
his birth, to investigate the continuing polio epidemic there.
He is also a regular reporter for the BBC’s One Show.
& Entertainment
Recently, he fronted a four-part documentary for BBC 2,
Africa with Ade Adepitan. The series documents Ade’s
journey through modern Africa, looking at how the
continent is changing.
Somehow, Ade has even found time to launch a series of
children’s books loosely based on his own experiences as
Media, Publishing

a child, growing up in east London and trying to fit in.
They centre around a dynamic hero who lives a life of action
and adventure, despite having one leg in a caliper.
Ade has received an MBE for services to disability sport.
He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Loughborough
University and a Lifetime Achievement award and an
Honorary Doctorate by the University of East London.

56 Powerlist 2020