“We were thinking that this is a really good lead at this point,” she says. Isabel says they managed to give the CD to the DJ, who, to her excitement, called her the next day and suggested meeting in London. She described to the Guardian and BBC putting together a demo CD, with her contact details inside, and says she went to the nightclub, supported by her best friend and stepmother. The Guardian has approached Global, the parent company of Capital Xtra, where Westwood is currently employed, for comment. “Any suggestion that he acts, or has acted, in the way described would be false and seriously defamatory.” They said he wanted to make clear that he did not behave in the manner described. They said he strenuously denied in their entirety the serious allegations being made against him. Lawyers acting for Westwood said he was a well-respected and highly successful DJ. He became a key figure in black music in the UK and was named best DJ at the Mobo (Music of Black Origin) awards multiple times.Īfter 20 years, the self-styled Big Dawg, left Radio 1, as part of a shake-up of its Saturday night schedule, and now hosts a show on Capital Xtra as well as regular club nights.Ī source at the BBC said the allegations were “appalling and disturbing” and said the corporation was not “sitting on” any information that would aid an investigation into the former Radio 1 DJ. In 1999, he was injured in a drive-by shooting, with one bullet going through the seat of the car he was in and another through his arm. Westwood has always courted a degree of controversy, often playing to a bad-boy image with on-mic banter that can be provocative and sexually explicit. He became the genre’s unmistakable voice when he started hosting BBC Radio 1’s first Rap Show in 1994, credited with giving fresh talent an unparalleled platform while enticing the biggest rappers in the world – from Public Enemy to Jay-Z – onto his show. Now 64, Westwood has been one of the best-known names in hip-hop and rap in the UK for the past 40 years. None of the women had reported their interactions to the police all have asked to remain anonymous. The Guardian and BBC know the identities of all the women, who are not known to each other and have never spoken. They were 17, 19 and 20 at the time of the alleged incidents.Ī further four women claim the DJ groped them while they were having a picture taken with him after one of his nightclub performances. Three of the women have accused Westwood of opportunistic and predatory sexual behaviour when they agreed to meet him, thinking they would be discussing the music industry or their own work. They feared their accounts would not be taken seriously because they were so young at the time the alleged incidents happened – and that racial discrimination would also lead people to minimise, dismiss or ignore their claims. Some of the women say they felt unable to talk about their experiences before. The veteran DJ remains a key figure in hip-hop music in the UK.

Westwood oneradio political report