I’ve met some amazing people in my life.

When Nelson Mandela was released and made his first visit to Britain, the organisers of his trip asked him what his itinerary should look like. His first request was to have breakfast with the young black people of the future and I was honoured at the age of 21 to be sat right next to him. Thirty and a bit years later I was asked to join The Prince of Wales’s table at a dinner which was a huge thrill too.

Then tonight Roast and The Cinnamon Club jointly hosted a dinner this evening for a man who had us all in awe and often in tears. In 1968 Tommie Smith gripped the world as the US athlete who won gold medal for the 200 metres and shared the evils of being black in Georgia and all the awful experiences that must have entailed by standing up in New Mexico and receiving his honour by raising the black power salute.

My guests had all had amazing experiences of their own – Garth Crooks was the first black footballer to score a goal in a FA cup final, Dianne Abbott was the first black woman to become an MP and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi was the first Muslim to be a Cabinet minister and chair of the Conservative Party.

But none of the collective achievements around the distinguished table could compare with the courage and dignity of Tommie’s amazing story, being shared with the world now through an extra-ordinary film of what he had to endure. Garth brought it all back to our contemporary moment by describing how recently his son, a beneficiary of his own success and a private education, chose to celebrate his own sporting achievement by raising his right hand in the same way as Tommie had do, years before he was even born.

People often think ethnic minorities complain too much but it showed that even those of us who have had a modicum of success in our lives have done so against a background that is anything but fair.

Tommie Smith. Look him up.