Floella Benjamin

In 2024, she was honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship award for her services to television.

Floella Benjamin was born on 23 September 1949 in Pointe-à-Pierre, Trinidad and Tobago, one of six siblings, with one older sister, three younger brothers and a younger sister. When her father decided to emigrate to Britain, with her mother later joining him along with Benjamin’s younger sister and youngest brother, the four older children were left in the care of family friends, with Benjamin and her older sister, Sandra, being separated from their brothers. The people looking after Benjamin and her sister were secretly abusive. Benjamin and her sister often tried writing to their parents to tell them about the abuse, but the letters were always read and censored before they were sent. In 1960 the children went to join their father in Beckenham, Kent. Floella Benjamin has discussed the racist experiences she had when arriving in Britain as an immigrant, such as with neighbours and at school. Having left school to work in a bank, she studied for A-levels at night school. After a spell as a stage actress in West End musicals, she began presenting children's television programmes in 1976, notably Play School, for the BBC.

Benjamin has appeared in Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Black Mikado and The Husband-In-Law, as well as several pantomimes. On screen, she appeared in the 1975 horror film I Don't Want to Be Born and starred in the 1977 film Black Joy. Her television credits include Angels, Within These Walls, Crown Court, The Gentle Touch and Dixon of Dock Green. She appeared as Juniper in the first episode of Bergerac (1981). Benjamin read two stories for the Story Teller magazine series (1983 and 1984). She was chief executive of Floella Benjamin Productions Ltd, which had produced television programmes since 1987 and was dissolved in 2014. In 1995 she became the voice of the "U" and "PG" information notices for the Video Standards Council. In 2006, she appeared in an episode of The Line of Beauty. Between 2007 and 2011, she guest-starred in the Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures as Professor Rivers of the Pharos Institute in the stories The Lost Boy, The Day of the Clown, The Eternity Trap, and Sky. She also narrated three "making-of" documentaries on the Doctor Who DVD boxed set The Black Guardian Trilogy. In 2007, she played a small role in the British comedy Run Fatboy Run. She sings with Damn Right I Got The Blues, a rock and blues band, and has said, "When I sing I am in my element." She featured in the 2023–24 New Year's Eve fireworks display in London, reciting the poem "In This World" by the late Benjamin Zephaniah as part of the segment celebrating the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush.

Benjamin's interest in education has also seen her on the "4Rs Commission" established by the Liberal Democrats to look into primary education in the UK. Benjamin is vice-president of NCH Action for Children and Barnardo's, and was in the NSPCC's Hall of Fame. She runs the London Marathon to raise funds for Barnardo's and the Sickle Cell Society. She was a cultural ambassador for the 2012 Summer Olympics. In September 2011, she participated in the Great North Run. She features in the BBCs CBeebies animation Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies. In July 2007 she spoke of what she saw as the low standard of children's television and in March 2013, she used a speech marking International Women's Day to warn of the impact on children of the availability of violent pornographic material online, saying that this was leading to the increasing objectification of women. Benjamin is a patron of the charity Beating Bowel Cancer, having lost her mother to the disease in 2009. In October 2015 in a talk to migrant children, Benjamin said that dropping her Trinidadian accent was the key to her success and that migrant pupils should do the same to avoid racism and bullying. In June 2022, as chair of the Windrush Commemoration Committee, she unveiled a statue in Waterloo Station by the sculptor Basil Watson as the National Windrush Monument in the presence of the Duke of Cambridge.