London Hughes reveals the drinking culture of kids' TV

London Hughes has claimed that  CBBC presenters used to drink shots while filming in the afternoon.

The comic, who worked on the BBC's children's channel for two years, told the Daily Telegraph: 'I didn’t really drink until I started working on kids’ TV. They’d bring round trays of shots at 4pm!’

But a BBC spokesperson told the newspaper: ‘London worked for CBBC a long time ago. This is not a picture we recognise.’

It's not the first time the 30-year-old has spoken of debauched behaviour on CBBC.

Last year she told Richard Herring on his Leicester Square Theatre podcast: ‘They have the best parties - Blue Peter parties, oh my God. Free bar, everyone throwing up on the One Show sofa, it's mad.’

She said colleagues used to goad her to down drinks before announcing the next programme live on air.

In her Telegraph interview to promote her show at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London on Friday, Hughes also spoke of the frustrations of being  a black female comedian, and the limited range of black experiences shown on TV.

The comic, who is shooting a US pilot  this year, said she was angry after seeing ‘black women like Gina Yashere give up on the UK and go to America’ because of the lack of opportunities here.

And she told of overt racism she experienced on the comedy circuit. She recalled performing to silence at one gig in Hull, after which a woman came up to her and said: ‘We didn’t not laugh because you aren’t funny.  We didn’t laugh because you’re black. Some people round here don’t like black people’.

Published: 4 Jan 2020