Strictly Come Dancing star Ricky Whittle has admitted that he was a victim of racist bullying whilst he lived in Northern Ireland.

Ricky’s father was stationed at an RAF base in County Antrim for six years and Ricky found it hard growing up in a country with so few black people.

Whittle told Love It magazine: “I must have been one of the first black people in the whole country. I stood out from the other children at school. They had never seen a black kid before and that’s when the bullying began.

“I had a hard time of it – the taunts could be cruel and menacing.”

He continued: “Sport proved to be my saviour. I got in the school football team and started to excel. The more goals I scored, the more popular I became. Instead of being the school ‘black kid’, I had now become the ‘star footballer’.”