Craig David blasts Leigh Francis for his 'racist' comedy on Bo' Selecta!

Craig David has branded Leigh Francis' caricatures of him and other black celebrities on 'Bo' Selecta' as "racist".

The '7 Days' singer has for many years claimed that Leigh's Channel 4 sketch series - which aired between 2002 and 2009 - and his surreal depiction of him as a musician who had a pet falcon named Kes, a reference to the 1969 British drama film of the same name, was responsible for derailing his pop career because people stopped taking him seriously.

Craig has now spoken out against the show and its creator once again saying his use of blackface to mock real people like him, Spice Girls star Mel B and chat show host Trisha Goddard was blatant "racism".

Appearing on the 'How To Fail' podcast, he said: "It was just cheap shots all the time. And there were many people being ridiculed.

"I spoke about Trisha Goddard and Mel B. It wasn’t just the fact there is three black people on that show and they were being ridiculed, it was racism however you look at that. You put a rubber mask on and you run it like that, you are being racist.”

Craig, 41, is critical of all the sketches on the show, because Leigh's entire premise was to mock real people with "cheap shots", citing his taunting of former England captain David Beckham over the "sound of his voice" as another example.

The 'Fill Me In' hitmaker added: "David Beckham... let’s not forget, there was a time he was being ridiculed about the sound of his voice and he was trying to find his voice and talk, and all my man did was literally just, ‘I’m going to trigger you and go to what I know will get you.'

“These weren’t hypothetical characters, they were real people with lives and feelings, and it was cheap shots, that was the premise of the show.”

Leigh - who now appears on TV as his comedy alter ego Keith Lemon - made a sincere and emotional apology to Craig, Mel B and Trisha back in June 2020 for the way he caricatured black celebrities and that same year he made an agreement with Channel 4 to take the show down from their All 4 streaming platform after deeming those sketches inappropriate for a modern audience.

However, the 49-year-old comic did recently speak out against Craig's constant complaints, insisting he thought they had moved on after calling a truce at mutual friend Fearne Cotton's wedding back in 2014 and that if the singer stopped talking about it then people would forget about the caricature.

Speaking to The Sun newspaper's TV Biz column, he said: "It’s ages ago, isn’t it? It is, 20 years ago. I wish he wasn’t upset. I bumped into him at Fearne’s wedding and we hugged it out and everything was all nice."