TV star Tan France returned to Britain after 15 years but pulled out of a trip to his home town – haunted by race hate he endured as a kid.
The stylist and presenter on Netflix reality show Queer Eye was heading up the M1 to Doncaster, South Yorks, when the painful memories hit home.
He had been determined to see his old stomping ground for a documentary on colourism and skin bleaching.
But he could not face taking the exit for Doncaster, where racist thugs had beaten him up and left him for dead.
Tan said a gang attacked him on his way to school because he was Pakistani. He now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with husband Rob and baby son Ismail.
Tan says of his time in the UK: “As an Asian, gay Muslim I was desperate to get away. I have been concerned about my skin colour from the day I was born.
“Growing up in Doncaster I always felt unsafe. I thought if I had whiter skin I wouldn’t be called a P*** every day.
“I used to wake up thinking, ‘What trouble is my skin going to get me into today?’ It was about survival. Being able to get home without being attacked.”
Of the first time he bleached his skin, he adds: “When I was nine I stole my sister’s bleaching cream and did it behind a locked door. It really stung. And then it felt like really bad sunburn.
“I did it again when 16 – ashamed of my ethnicity and colour. I know now bleaching is a form of self-harm.”
Sales of skin bleaching products net £7billion – and rising – every year.
Tan reveals in the show that some UK clinics do bleaching intravenously using liver disease drugs which have the side effect of lightening skin.
He also talks to Kelly Rowland, from Destiny’s Child, who has been vocal about colourism, a form of discrimination based on skin tone.
She says: “My boyfriend’s gran compared the colour of my skin to a paper bag and said I was too chocolate.
“I was always described as the darkest one in the group. I wanted to be desired for my beauty. I wanted to be Mariah’s shade. I have been pushed to the brink by colourism.”
Tan hopes his documentary will help to bust the beauty myth that white is better. A psychotherapist diagnoses him as suffering from deep trauma from racist abuse he suffered as a child.
Tan adds: “I hope to break the cycle that pushed me and thousands like me to bleach. And still does.”
Tan France: Beauty & the Bleach is on BBC2, 9pm on Wednesday.
