FASH: ITV NO LONGER PRODUCING JUSTIN FASHANU DRAMA DUE TO EDITORIAL ISSUES

ITV have confirmed it will no longer produce Fash, a drama from playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah on the life of Justin Fashanu.

An ITV spokesperson said: "For editorial reasons we are no longer producing the drama about Justin Fashanu. Logistically we weren't able to involve everyone we would have liked to involve to do the show justice."

In 1981, at 20 years old, Justin Fashanu signs to Nottingham Forest, becoming the first black British footballer to be sold for £1 million, becoming one of the most celebrated men in British sport.

In 1990, he is the first professional footballer to publicly come out as gay. In 1998, with his football career in tatters and ostracised by his family, Justin commits suicide. In 1981, Justin’s younger brother John signs to Norwich City, the same club at which his brother made his name.

Over the next few years, as his younger brother’s star fades and life becomes mired by pitch-side rumour and front-page tabloid exposés, John supersedes Justin as the famous Fashanu. In 1998, when Justin dies, the two are wholly estranged.

ITV billed Fash as "the unvarnished, unflinchingly honest and heart-breaking story of two young men each trapped in their own damaging and dangerous notions of masculinity that traverses back and forth across their eventful lives, from a childhood spent in Dr Barnado’s care homes in the care of a white foster family.

When they had nobody to rely on but each other amid an overwhelmingly white community which always saw them as “other”, to their tragic and irreconcilable estrangement that played out across the national media.

But Fash is more than simply a modern Cain and Abel tale. In this series Kwei-Armah skilfully, powerfully and resolutely exposes the toxic prejudices that ran to the heart of Britain at the time – both socially and institutionally – which catalysed the breakdown of these two brothers’ relationship, from the entrenched racism and homophobia ingrained in sport, and in football in particular, to the dangerously intrusive and relentless tabloid media which stoked such hate."

Fash was announced by ITV in 2022.