`And you're a broad caster?" said Queen Elizabeth. "Much more than that," said Alex Pascall, as he accepted his OBE.

And he spoke truly. The occasion was at Buckingham Palace where he was being honoured for his work in community relations in the 1996 New Year's Honours list.

Alex was born on the island of Grenada in the Caribbean - a place most us know only from a brief episode when it was invaded, and they whys and wherefores of that escape nearly everybody.

Early childhood memories include being brought to school on horseback at the age of three, and strict teachers giving a strongly structured training which proved to be a resilient foundation for grammar school. But after school hours there was a happy world in an idyllic climate, where an extended family was the norm, and a great source of psychological security.

Alex went to the English-influenced school, rather than to the other colleges run by Irish missionaries: there's a subtle difference in ethos, he agrees, but this is small compared with the grasp of principles the pupils obtained. And he graduated as a very apt pupil, and took the emigrant ship - this was in 1959 before there were planes - to conquer the Mother Country.

That's when racism started hitting home. I've heard him relate the story on radio, and Alex has a voice to beguile any microphone. Indeed, when he took singing lessons, the teacher thought she had found the next Paul Robeson and was mightily disgruntled when he didn't go into opera.

Here was a bright product of the colonial education system, and he couldn't get a job anywhere near his qualifications. The final indignity was when he had to undergo a medical examination to work for London Underground.

The beautifully rounded vowels with a near-Welsh inflection rise with indignation as he explains how the doctor told him to remove his trousers . . . "and we Caribbeans, we drop our trousers for nobody!" Yet this indignity he suffered, and many others thereafter, and got a job on the Piccadilly Line of the Underground. And this endurance of forbearance bred a strength in him, and the knowledge that it's not the strongest who survive, but those who can endure the longest.

His natural gifts as a story-teller couldn't long be suppressed: he soon started working in local radio in London, using the medium to unite a diaspora, conquering individual loneliness and speaking to people in a language they could understand.

Black Londoners was the first such programme on Radio London, and he ran it for 14 years. And from that came the involvement in the famed Notting Hill Carnival, for five years in the eighties, which he describes as a crash-course political education.

It happens during the media silly season, and had become a by-word for violence and clashes with police. It was a huge job getting the headlines changed to No Clashes With Police, and then slowly move them on to coverage of the exuberant enjoyment and the wonderful costumes of this Mardi Gras in exile.

But it happened, and it was for this that he got the OBE. It was not an easy decision to accept it: there are begrudgers in every culture, and some supporters said he was being bought off. Alex responded by calling the award the Order of Black Excellence, and most of Black London turned up to the party at Islington Council. Of course, real fame didn't happen until he got a storytelling job on the Teletubbies on TV: now every child in Ireland and Britain can recognise him.

An essential part of his work is visiting schools. A simple man in a T-shirt, with a drum, a fund of songs and stories and huge warmth of personality can make a permanent difference to a school in one visit.

In one sense, he says, he's giving children the space and time that used to be supplied by grandparents; nowadays with parents working and families fragmented, it's a resource too seldom available.

Actually, he's been working with school groups in Dublin since 1963. I've seen him in action, both in the Gaelscoil in Clondalkin, and also in Stanhope Street, where he was asked to prepare three schools for a Caribbean item in the 1996 St Patrick's Day parade. The weather was foul for the march, but his influence was such that the Gospel Choir in Church Street are still alive and operating. Seeing the control and understanding he can get from any-size group of youngsters must inspire respect in all teachers

As he puts it: "Racism has to be learned." An average child is curious about meeting someone with a different colour of skin. They normally want to find out what life is like in a different country, whether there are snakes there, and sometimes, what it's like to have a different kind of hair.

If, through using songs, stories and sometimes food or clothes, you can teach them geography, social history and positive attitudes, that's a day well spent - and probably just as effective as any subcommittee's report and evaluation.

Not every child can be good academically, or at games, he says, but everyone can join in at clapping and singing. The sense of inclusion and acceptance gained through participation in simple, even camp-fire style, entertainment is the foundation of confidence and self-esteem. This was the philosophy behind the 1997 Stafford Project against Racism in the Community, involving over 600 children from seven schools. He also organised a an exhibition that went by rail all around Britain.

Much of his work now is in Wales, where the community spirit in the valleys gives a ready hearth to his gentle fire. This year he's working to set up a Caribbean Heritage Centre at Greenwich, to highlight the contribution its people have made for over three centuries.

Alex was last here just before Christmas to help an event, Deep Echoes, with the Asylum-Seekers Network of the NUJ (National Union of Journalists), as part of the True Colours programme of the DIT.

Along with other journalists like Abel Ugba and Chinedu Onyejelem of Nigeria and Cherif Labrechg of Algeria, they portrayed the wideness of cultural diversity to an audience of over 100 students, mainly in media-related courses. Even operasinging tutor Kathleen Tynan contributed to a very successful occasion.

This is restoring the social and community aspects of self-made entertainment. And it works

Contact the Asylum-Seekers Network at liberty.hall@nuj.ie and Alex Pascall at ideasuk@cwcom.net.