I couldn't believe I hadn't heard of the woman whose career made mine possible

TV presenter June Sarpong's new book looks at the incredible life of the first black woman broadcaster to work at the BBC. ELLA WALKER finds out more

- ELLA WALKER

JUNE SARPONG'S laugh is one of the greatest sounds in the world.

It's one a generation of viewers grew up with as the soundtrack to Channel 4 teen show, T4.

Powerful, edgy, irreverent telly, June and her co-hosts the likes of Vernon Kay and Steve Jones - would grill celebs in the gaps around a Friends episode and the Hollyoaks omnibus.

"There were all sorts of sketches on that show that you definitely couldn't do now," she says, cackling raucously. "I think we got close to being cancelled a couple of times back then! I can only imagine what would happen if that were today."

June, 47, was a prodigy, starting out on radio at 16 and by 19, she was on TV. "It's funny, Vernon and I were talking about it recently. We were all so young," she says.

"People say, 'Oh my God, you were part of my youth', and they don't realise we were more or less the same age as our audience.

"It's just, none of us went to university! We went straight on air."

Calling her time on T4 "such a gift", she reckons the show was probably only possible during the early Noughties.

"There aren't many shows like that, and there certainly hasn't been another one like it since," she says with pride.

Now we're obsessed with looking back at that time, be it the fashion (baggy jeans have returned) or documentaries exploring Nineties and Noughties boy band culture, such as Boybands Forever on BBC, and Sky's No Matter What, looking at the rise and fall of Boyzone.

"That was my era," buzzes June, who grew up in Walthamstow, London, and was born to Ghanaian parents.

"I'm so glad to be Gen X. We had the best time. How lucky for my generation, to be old enough to remember life before the internet, before the digital revolution, but still young enough to be able to adopt it.