Alastair Moffat of ScotlandsDNA, which carried out the analysis, told the news agency that showing how many Brits have the ginger gene could help end the prejudice that “blights the lives” of many redheads. Some anti-racist activists have spent the last year explaining that racism isn’t simply prejudice based on how one looks, but a system, much like capitalism, communism, and socialism, put in place by those in power around a specific set of ideas – in this case, racist ones. Earlier this month, Gueye and Eldridge-Tull ran for Labour in district and local council elections respectively, determined to make change through local policy.

On 17 June, Harper, who may be best known as the immigration minister responsible for sending vans encouraging illegal immigrants to “go home” around parts of London, appeared to encourage an online pile-on against Eldridge-Tull, who had a tenth of his 30,000 followers, and demanded she apologise to the local community for tweeting: “The reaction to the BLM protest in Lydney has brought to light so much support, but so much hate. Though it was a play where people use wands to cast spells, certain people couldn’t manage to see Hermione, written in the books as having brown eyes and frizzy hair, as anything but a white woman. And worse, it can lead to school refusal, health problems, self-injurious behaviour and even children wanting and trying to die by suicide,” added Meleady, who was awarded an MBE in 2000 for her services to children. I think it speaks volumes that BAME people are still willing to protest for their human rights even though they are disproportionately affected by the pandemic,” wrote Gueye. If some unfortunate souls can’t get their head round the fact that a black woman can play a character who breathes underwater, has clam shells for a bra, a crab for a mentor and a flounder for a pal, then I pity them.

Despite being riddled with anxiety the night before, Gueye and Eldridge-Tull went ahead with their plans; in the end, their event was a calm and peaceful success attended by some 300 people of all ages, and no litter was left behind. But Gueye’s attempts to hold a small “celebration of BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) culture” sparked a furious backlash that, one year on, still reverberates throughout the small Gloucestershire town of Lydney.

Khady Gueye, left, and Eleni Eldridge-Tull at Bathurst Park, Lydney, where they arranged their 2020 BLM event. Last year, Tremlett took the matter of the Forest of Dean’s BLM movement to local Conservative MP Mark Harper, who raised the matter in the House of Commons. Gueye was repeatedly told to go back to where she came from if she didn’t like it and that she would be responsible for bringing harm to Lydney residents. When they first spoke to the Observer last year, Gueye and her friend Eleni Eldridge-Tull, also 25 and a PhD student, were organising a Black Lives Matter event in Lydney due to take place on Sunday 20 June.

Ariel may be rebellious and strong-willed, but her story, for all its catchy songs, is essentially a morality tale about the corrupting influence of a world outside her father’s control and the virtues of a woman’s silence. It is one of half a dozen reports she has made to the police in the last year for harassment and racial abuse. Look at the legion ginger women we have in the public eye, from Angela Rayner and Lily Cole to Julianne Moore and Karen Gillan.