Who is Ade Adepitan? Paralympian and presenter

ADE Adepitan is best known for his successful career as a wheelchair basketball player and TV personality.

He is a regular staple on our screens, but who is he?

Ade presents Children In Need

Who is Ade Adepitan?

Ade Adepitan was born in Nigeria on March 27 1973.

He contracted polio aged just six months and eventually lost the use of his legs.

He moved to East London when he was just three-years-old.

Over the years he has become a popular TV presenter and pundit and is often seen on our screens.

He was awarded an MBE for service to disability sport in 2005.

When did Ade Adepitan compete in the Paralympics?

Ade has has quite the wheelchair basketball career.

During his sporting career, he was a member of the Great Britain team that won bronze at the 2004 Summer Paralympics.

Adepitan was one of the main presenters of the London 2012 Paralympics on Channel 4 and again four years later in Rio.

He also went on to work as a presenter on the BBC for the Invictus Games in Toronto, Canada, in 2017.

Adepitan also hosts BBC Children in Need.

For the 2023 show, he is presenting alongside Mel Giedroyc, Jason Manford, Chris Ramsey, Lenny Rush and Alex Scott MBE.

They will be presenting the jam-packed evening of sketches and performances featuring well-known faces as you’ve never seen them before.

What other TV shows has he presented?

Ade has featured on multiple television programmes and series over the years as an actor, presenter or guest.

His TV career started back in 2002 when he was one of three wheelchair basketball players featured in BBC One ident Hip-Hop.

In 2005, Adepitan participated in Beyond Boundaries which was a four-part documentary where he trekked through rainforests, deserts, rivers and mountains in Nicaragua.

He made his own video diary filmed in London and Spain, talking about his sporting goals and how he coped as a London boy living in Zaragoza unable to speak any Spanish.

Ade was a judge on Dancing On Wheels in 2010, in which six couples competed to enter the Wheelchair Dance Sport European Championships.

Then in 2019, Adepitan was the presenter of a new four-part series for BBC Two called Africa With Ade Adepitan.

He acted in CBBC series Desperados as wheelchair basketball coach, Baggy Awolowo.

He was also a main presenter on Channel 4 for the London 2012 Paralympic Games as well as 2020.

He was also part of the Channel 4 2014 Winter Paralympic Games and the Rio 2016 Paralympics presenting team alongside Clare Balding.

In 2023, Channel 4 commissioned Ade: My Week in the Whitest Place on Earth which is an upcoming film in which Adepitan travels to Orania, a whites-only town in South Africa.