will.i.am has backed calls for a Bristol campaigner to get his own statue after meeting him face-to-face at a city bus station.
The Black Eyed Peas rapper and star of The Voice met with Bristol Bus Boycott legend Roy Hackett, for new ITV documentary The Blackprint.
Introducing the programme, which aired on Thursday evening (October 14), he said the Black Lives Matter protests last year made him realise that "I don't know anything about Black Britain".
READ MORE: The lawyer and nightclub owner fighting to make Bristol a fairer place
He wanted to explore people's experiences of being Black in Britain compared to in America, and cameras followed him visiting several cities and towns including London, Bristol, Liverpool and Smethick in the West Midlands to learn more.
The hour-long documentary, available to watch on ITV Hub during Black History Month and beyond, has been met with a hugely positive response from viewers and reviewers.
During their discussion, understood to have taken place at the Lawrence Hill bus depot, Roy explained to Will how his activism in 1963 began when he saw a man crying.
When he asked why he was upset, the man held up an advert seeking people to train as bus drivers, and said he had been denied the opportunity.
Roy told Will: "I took him up to the counter, it was a lady [there].
"She said they didn't want him because he wasn't white."
The backlash and widespread press coverage that followed when they exposed the discrimination eventually convinced Bristol Omnibus Company to relent, after four months of campaigning led by Roy, Paul Stephenson, Owen Henry, Audley Evans, Prince Brown, Guy Bailey and the West Indian Development Council.
After hearing from Roy and his granddaughter, Will said: "Wow. Turning that one act of kindness into a movement that then altered race relations in the UK.
"You made a huge difference - you have done something that is timeless."
They also discussed slave trader Edward Colston and his statue's momentous fall during a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol last June.
In the documentary's voice-over after Roy's interview, Will said: "If it was up to me, I would put a statue of Roy Hackett on a plinth.
"His actions help integrate Black people into the workforce, and that's powerful."
The Black Eyed Peas rapper, who is also a judge on The Voice UK, spoke during the documentary of how he "escaped the struggle" growing up in inner city LA.
He admitted: "Music literally changed my life - saved my life. Had I not been addicted to music, I probably would have joined a gang."
He spoke at the end of the programme about his hopes of a better future for the next generation of people growing up Black in Britain, and his optimism that the achievements of those who fought for change will continue to be celebrated.
The celebrity is not the first to call for a statue of Roy - just hours after Colston's statue sunk to the bottom of Bristol Harbour, a petition was set up to get one of Roy to take its place on the empty plinth.
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