“GRANNY came on a boat,” intones Bashy in his song Made In Britain. “Granny came on her own,” continues the 39-year-old rapper and actor. “Granny came out to England cos she thought the pavements were gold.
” The granny in question is his mother’s mother, Thelma Stanbury. Born in 1927 and raised in a rural part of Jamaica , Thelma is from the Windrush generation. With thousands of others, she sailed to these shores after the war in search of a new and prosperous life for her family.
READ MORE MUSIC NEWS A recording of the 97-year-old’s voice can be heard at the start of Made In Britain. In her warm Jamaican accent, she says: “My grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, I wish them the best of health. “I hope they succeed in whatsover they want to be.
” One of those grandchildren is succeeding in what he wants to be, helping to realise Thelma’s dream — Ashley Thomas, aka Bashy. Most read in Music He’s forging a stellar acting career with roles in Black Mirror, crime dramas Top Boy and The Night Of, the 2017 reboot of 24 and the recent BBC adaptation of Great Expectations. Bashy is currently filming a Netflix political thriller, The Choice, in which Suranne Jones plays the Prime Minister and he is her husband.
But the chief reason I’m talking to him is his second album, a soul-baring song cycle, Being Poor Is Expensive, rooted in his North West London upbringing. It arrives 15 years after his debut, Catch Me If You Can, the long gap explained, he sa.