Levi Roots' incredible life - eight kids and prison as he stuns CBB housemates
Levi Roots shocked his Celebrity Big Brother housemates and some viewers when he confessed he has eight children by seven different women - but it is just part of an amazing life.
The 65-year-old has had an incredible rollercoaster ride. He arrived in the UK aged 11 from Jamaica as a child of the Windrush generation, unable to read or write. Despite setbacks, prison sentences among them, he has been able to inspire millions.
On Tuesday night's CBB as the housemates climbed into bed for their first night in the house, Marisha Wallace asked the star how many children he has. As Levi replied: "Eight" the housemates were shocked as Fern Britton exclaimed: "Man alive". Levi then admitted: "Fern it gets worse,' as he continued: 'I have eight children with seven different mothers."
Celebrity Big Brother, star, Levi Roots, has come a long way from his time on Dragons' DenIn a 2017 interview Levi said he had seven grown up children; four girls (Bernice, Nathalie, Jo-Anne, Sharlene) and three boys (Zaion, Tyran, Danai) aged from 27 to 40 – as well as a son, Christopher who was four at the time but is now 11.
He said at the time: "I’m hoping they are inspired by what their dad has done. I’ve got to be a shining example for them. When it comes to being a father the second time around, I now have hindsight. A great thing. Now, I am the best Levi Roots I can be. I was still learning while having my other kids and I wasn’t the best of me."
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Levi’s life began growing up in a tiny little village in Clarendon, Jamaica. As a young boy, Levi helped his grandmother in the kitchen. She taught him the secrets and subtleties of mixing Caribbean flavours, herbs and spices. Levi also discovered his love for music at the church his grandmother sung at.
Once his parents had settled in London's Brixton and earned money for a few years, Levi left his grandparents and then moved to England aged 11, but he struggled at school. At 15 he says he ended up in a detention centre for three months for assaulting a police officer.
Levi then began to have a series of relationships which led to him having seven children. He said: "I'm not proud of how I was before. I had my first at 19, the way we lived back then in our local, it was really difficult.
"If I could have focused, maybe things would have turned out. There's no perfect way. Sometimes life has to lead you." Worse was to come when police raided the youth club he ran and he was sentenced to nine years in prison, serving around half the time.
By the time he went to prison in 1986 he had seven children and he said they "kept him alive". But he wasn't a good father until he had his eighth child born many years later.
On The Starting Line podcast he explained: "I think I was probably a rubbish dad, you know, before. I wasn't that good because I went away all the time. I never had a proper job to be able to look after them. So I wasn't a good dad to, you know, to seven of the kids.
"But I think since Christopher's been born[youngest] and having a relationship with my new love, Martina, and we formed that family unit, I think I'm the best bloody dad that there had ever been. "It is about feedback. I learned from feedback how to be a better dad."
Queen Camilla speaks with Levi during a reception to mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush (Getty Images)On his prison past, he added: "It even made it worse when I had my sentence knowing that I had seven children. That they come to visit you. And again, that kept me alive and gave me a reason and a purpose to wanting to come out and do better and not mope about the sentence and that I didn't do it and all that kind of stuff. I settled down for them really, and came out a new man."
Levi, maintains his innocence, and asserts that the police planted drugs and a gun. He said: “I took my sentence not knowing how I managed to get myself in this position. I accepted that this was where I was. And it wasn’t until many years later, after Dragons’ Den, when I got famous, that the police officer that arrested me wrote a book. And in the book it literally says how he set me up.
“It was the time of the Yardie gangs, in the 80s. According to his [Peter Bleksley’s] book [The Gangbuster], they were trying to root out Yardies. One of the greatest tragedies is that I was always trying to tell my mum this is not the son that she knew.”
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His life was turned around by an intern at the prison called Theresa who got rid of his anger and came out a changed man five years later. From 1991 he made food and sauces at Notting Hill Carnival and country markets around the UK and slowly built up a reputation and a business.
Fast forward to 2007 and he pitched his Reggae Reggae sauce on Dragon's Den and his life changed forever. The £50,000 investment from has allowed him to sell sauce worth millions of pounds.
Since he has become famous some of his children have spoken out against him and been critical. In 2014 two of his daughters claimed he had failed to provide child support, leaving at least four of his children struggling on benefits.
He shot to fame after pitching his Reggae Reggae Sauce to Dragons' Den (PA)Joanne Caesar and Sharlene Williams made various accusations with one claiming she helped him develop his famous sauce, and also sang backing vocals on the advert that helped launch it to stardom. Both sisters slammed their father's parenting, describing him as financially tight-fisted.
Sharlene told Daily Mail in 2014: "It was always his way or the highway. I managed the shop, but he didn’t want to pay me. He refused to pay me and my brother a wage. I was forced to claim benefits to make ends meet. Without my benefits I would have been homeless a very long time ago."
Joanne added back then: "He and Tony came up with the idea of making a sauce but my dad took the recipe home to see what he could do with it. Me and my sister Sharlene made the sauce in his kitchen, so we knew the secret. He used to send us to Lidl to pick up the ingredients." When the story was published, Levi refused to comment. Joanne added: "I just want him to remember who he was before he became Mr Reggae Reggae Sauce man because he was a nice man."
Levi, real name Keith Graham Valentine, now has cookbooks and his own TV series. In 2008, Levi hosted his debut TV series ‘Caribbean Food Made Easy’ in which he aimed to make the vibrant tastes and healthy ingredients of Caribbean food more accessible, and it was accompanied by his iconic book of the same name.
As well as cooking, Levi continued to fulfill his passion for credible roots music by releasing his studio album ‘Red Hot’ with its catchy summer single ‘So Out Of My Mind’, in 2009. And before Celebrity Big Brother he had appeared in recent years on other TV shows including MasterMind, The Chase and The Wheel.
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