I thought people might be interested to read this extract from Jim Waterson’s excellent London Centric newsletter this week:
It’s not often you’re walking the streets of south east London trying to track down a king. But it’s not often that a goalkeeping YouTuber from Lewisham is supposedly chosen as a Ugandan monarch.
Born-and-bred Londoner George Desmond Kamurasi has, according to one Ugandan journalist, been chosen as the rightful hereditary King of Tooro by a council of elders in a secret meeting.
Naturally, we wanted to talk to this 36-year-old London content creator and verify whether he really is to be the ruler of more than a million people in the western part of Uganda — or if this is a viral news story that has got out of control. Which meant going door-to-door in pouring rain on Wednesday in a bid to find a man who until relatively recently taught PE in Lewisham primary schools.
After a series of dead ends we wound up at a Victorian terraced house in Brockley, where corporate records show Kamurasi once registered his goalkeeper training businesses.
A man answered the door.
“Hello, is it possible to speak to George Kamurasi?”
The man said he didn’t recognise the name.
“He’s the new king?”
The man’s face remained blank.
“Er, ‘Big G’?”
A massive smile broke out on the man’s face as he recognised the name of one of his son’s best friends: “Ohhh, Big G!”
Kamurasi, who is known as Big G due to his 6ft 6in height, is in the running to be King of Tooro following the death of his 34-year-old cousin King Oyo. One of more than a dozen regional monarchs in Uganda, the position has no formal powers but the job remains an important ceremonial role. Nothing has been formally announced on the succession, with the western Ugandan region still in mourning.
The announcement of Big G as the potential king has caused ructions in both Uganda and London and a rapid media feeding frenzy. There were lightly sourced claims that Kamurasi, a Lewisham resident with a young family who got married at the Old Royal Naval College this summer and is building a successful content creation business, may not be that keen to leave London to take up the job. There are also claims, reported by the BBC, that some in Uganda are claiming the late king had a secret son who should inherit the throne instead of Kamurasi – setting up a messy dispute.
Which takes us back to south east London, an area of the capital which has not always been the friendliest place for Ugandan kings.
The man who answered the door at Kamurasi’s former business address declined to give his name but he rang Big G on our behalf. Sadly, the potential king’s phone number diverted to voicemail. The man then rang his son, who plays alongside Big G for SE Dons, an ambitious non-League football team with a large social media following.
The son politely explained that Kamurasi and the rest of the squad have decided to stay quiet pending an “official announcement” on who will inherit the throne, suggesting discussions are active. This announcement is expected this weekend, following the burial of the old king in western Uganda.
All of this has come at a strange time for Kamurasi, who has built his profile while talking openly about his run-ins with the Met police as a teenager, warning children to avoid knife crime, and explaining how he turned his life around by focusing on hard work and football.
He was a regular on Sky Sports’ Soccer AM and has helped turn SE Dons into a major online brand with him at the centre of it, giving inspirational Instagram-friendly team talks while graduating from Sunday league pitches to playing at Lewisham’s Ladywell athletics stadium. This season his football team secured a lease on their own ground in Bexleyheath to go with their longterm sponsorship deal with German Doner Kebab and countless brand endorsements.
The general impression from our doorstep chat was that a tight-knit group of south east London football friends are somewhat taken aback by finding one of their number is potentially a Ugandan king — with the added worry of Big G missing his chance to live his dream of leading his team on their first run in the FA Cup. Their next fixture is away in Rochester on Friday night. Given the clash with a potential coronation, don’t count on him making the starting lineup.