Ade Adepitan

Having survived polio as a youngster, Ade has gone on to compete as a wheelchair basketball player on an international level and has a wealth of TV presenting experience.

Using his sporting expertise, Ade is a regular commentator on NBA coverage. In 2008 he commentated on the wheelchair basketball at the Beijing Olympics for the BBC and regularly covers the basketball final for the Paralympic World Cup for BBC Two’s Grandstand. He is also a regular reporter on BBC Ones’s Sportsround series.

Aside from sports presenting, Ade appeared in the high profile idents for BBC1, he presented BBC One’s daily X-Change programme for five years, and was a reporter for BBC One’s Holiday series. 2005 saw Ade participate in Beyond Boundaries, a four part documentary series for BBC2, which took him on the trek of a lifetime across the rainforests, deserts, rivers and mountains of Nicaragua. He took on a new challenge in 2006 with his first principle acting role for BBC One’s popular kids’ drama, Desperados. He has also appeared in Brit feature film Freight and BBC One’s Casualty.

Ade has proved he is capable of a lot more than your ordinary presenter. He has represented Great Britain at the Olympics in Athens 2004 (Bronze) and Sydney 2000 plus competing in The European (Silver) and World Championships (Gold).

Ade is patron for The Association of Wheelchair Children and Scope. He is an Ambassador for London’s 2012 Olympic bid, features in their high profile poster campaign and was an integral part of the delegation that went to Singapore to present to the Olympic committee to help bring the games to London. In 2006, Ade was given an honorary Doctorate by Loughborough University and had the honour of being awarded an MBE for his contribution to disabled sport in the Queen’s 2005 Birthday Honours.

In 2007 Ade took on the challenge of the London Marathon, which he completed in just over two and a half hours. Not one to sit on the sidelines, Ade’s new sporting passion is wheelchair tennis. He can often be seen at Roehampton early in the mornings practicing his killer serve!

Ade is a judge on Dancing on Wheels and says “I wanted to get involved with Dancing on Wheels because it's something new and groundbreaking for TV. I was fascinated to see how it would work. Also, I was really interested in seeing the reaction of able-bodied celebrities having to adapt to dancing with wheelchair dancers.”