You're listening to Unfiltered with James O'Brien, brought to episode six of Unfiltered, which features June Sarpong.

And well it occurred to me when I was doing the research for the interview and reading her

new book, Diversify.

Out of everyone that's done Unfiltered so far, I probably know the least about

her, which is odd because she's been pretty famous for most of my adult life, and that I think

will give me the basis of my first question. June Saapone, thank you for joining me on Unfiltered.

You are, unless I've lost count, I'm going to run out of fingers, you are our fifth guest.

Yes. And you are, I hope you don't mind me saying, you're the first one that I kind of, I know what you do and I know what you have done.

But I don't really have a very clear picture of who you are

and where and where you came from all of which you draw on in your new book

diversify six degrees of integration which we will talk about but it is I mean even from a cursory reading it's clear that you draw upon your own past a lot in arriving at the conclusions that you arrive at so we'll start with your past if we may you were born

here but your parents weren't exactly so I was born in East London but my parents are

from Ghana and I was raised in East London until I was about three.

And then the idea was we were going to move back to Ghana.

And at the time, there was a new government in and my parents wanted to participate in nation building.

And we got back to Ghana, we had a very cushy life, they were part of the elite we were very wealthy and then within a year a coup happened

And so overnight we went from having everything to nothing.

And so we came back to the UK and...

Fleeing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, one of my earliest memories is of armed militia

breaking into our home in the middle of the night. So yeah, so we fled...

Because your parents were politically active or just because they were wealthy or...

...