With Inside Out back on our screens for a brand new series this week, Birmingham's own Ayo Akinwolere returns to his home city to get the low-down on the latest issues affecting the West Midlands. This series, he's been investigating the impact of Brexit on the region and its many migrant workers. We spoke to him to find out more about the show, his career so far, and his intriguing recent decision to change his professional name...

“One of the things that we've been particularly looking at in the first episode is how the Brexit vote could affect local agriculture. Very few English people know that we have a lot of seasonal fruit pickers coming from Eastern Europe who are completely integral to providing the fresh British produce that we see in our supermarkets,” he says. “You hear a lot of discussion around whether or not foreign workers are taking money away from British ones, but what's interesting is that a lot of people aren't even here to stay – they just come seasonally to earn a bit of money, a lot of which they'll spend in the locality, and then 6-12 weeks later they'll go home.”

Regular Inside Out West Midlands viewers might know Ayo better by his English name, Andy, which he has used throughout his career so far, since his days on CBBC's Blue Peter. But a desire to reconnect with his Nigerian roots has led to the decision to swap that for the name his parents originally gave him.

“My full name is actually Odunayo Andrew Akinwolere, but when I came to the UK, my parents decided I should use my English name, which is my middle name, and over the years it just kind of stuck. But in the back of my mind I was always wondering what it would have been like if I'd just used Ayo from day one. I feel like I've reached a point in my career now where I'm almost shedding my skin. I left Blue Peter about five years ago, I've just finished filming something for Channel 4 and I'm on my third series of Inside Out, so it's quite nice to enter this new phase of my life as the person I think I really am. In a very strange way, it's almost like a coming out.”

The adoption of an English name was just one part of a wider endeavour to “fit in” when his family first moved to the UK during his childhood. At school and out with friends, Ayo assumed a sort of British persona, while at home with his family, he'd slip back into his native language and culture.

“It's interesting – I think immigrant kids who come to the UK very often have that two-sided approach to life, maybe speaking a mother tongue at home, which for me was Yoruba. For a lot of parents bringing their children from other countries, there's a worry that their children might find it hard to integrate. English people seem to really struggle with pronouncing foreign names, so I don't think anyone wants to make it difficult for them – they just want to blend in. But as you get older and you become more comfortable with yourself, you realise that many of those things you've always kept sacred at home are actually what defines you as a person, and that they are things to be celebrated.”

The struggle to reconcile conflicting identities and influences is something that will doubtless resonate with many people in a multicultural city like Birmingham. Nevertheless, over the last few years, there has been a noticeable shift in attitudes towards the open expression of cultural difference.

“One of the things that prompted this decision was friends and colleagues seeing my name on my passport whenever we travelled, and asking me why I didn't just use my first name, because it was more interesting than Andy,” he explains. “I think it's just something in the ether at the moment – there's this constantly circulating idea of identity, of who we are and where we come from that resonates even for completely British people. I have mates who talk about their Scottish heritage and how they want to celebrate that aspect of their culture, for example. And there's also been a huge shift in paradigms for the way we view identity in terms of gender or sexuality, say. Obviously there was an element of naivety back in the day – I was teased a little bit about my surname in school, but now, people will just give it a go, and it feels amazing. People will ask how to spell it, and I feel like it's a bit of an education for them.”

This issue of national and cultural identity is one of many strands that have fed into the debate around Britain's relationship with Europe in recent months, and is something that will naturally be interpreted in a variety of different ways in the diverse cities of the West Midlands.

“We're at a point now in our society where integration is just part of who we are and how are society works, and nowhere do you see that more prevalently that in Birmingham. We can look at how dependent big institutions like the NHS are on foreign workers, for example. But there is also this debate about what it means to be English now and to live in this country, and the fundamental thing about Brexit is that it's got us to address who we are as Brits, what we represent and how open to integration we actually are. A lot of people will happily go and have a curry or go to a Chinese or Thai place to eat, but if they feel like “Indian” people are classing themselves as British it just doesn't sit well for them. It's really made me question how integrated we actually are and to what extent our ideas about integration actually come from a relatively privileged position.”

Integration comes down to more than just work and school, of course – it's also about how we socialise, and the kinds of activities we engage in during our free time. Having spent most of his life unable to swim, towards the end of his time on Blue Peter, Ayo achieved something most people would consider impossible: after a crash course lasting just a few weeks, he went on to break a world record for swimming in the world's deepest body of open water. Since then, he's become increasingly aware of the disproportionate number of people from ethic minority backgrounds in this country who never learn to swim, and has been leading a drive to encourage diversity in the water.

“The trigger for my own swimming ambition was just looking at the final line-up for the Sidney Olympics and also the 2012 Olympics in London, and not seeing a single brown face. I think the achievements of someone like Simone Manuel in Rio this year are extraordinary, and it is really important for kids to see that, because it might make them think that perhaps they can do it. Across the board, we see people of all different ethnicities being great at all sorts of sports, so if we can harness that in the swimming world, especially for people who've become disillusioned with other sports, we might just be able to have a chance of having that colourful Team GB squad one day.”

But Olympians alone aren't enough to make a difference. In a world where huge numbers of children are still leaving school completely unable to swim, and where city-dwelling adults are less inclined than ever to overcome an ingrained anxieties about getting into the water, more needs to be done locally, Ayo believes, to make swimming more accessible to a wider range of people.

“We can't just rely on these people to be role models, because they only pop in once every four years on the biggest stage in the world to show us what they can do, so I think it's really more about local communities trying to get the new generation of young people in. This is more important than just fitness – I keep reading the papers and seeing all these stories of people who have drowned in lakes or pools or in the sea just because they didn't know how to swim, and that can only stop if certain communities start stepping forward and treating it as a real problem they need to address.”

“One of the problems is that swimming's one of those sports which is still quite expensive to learn. At the moment I'm still living between London and Birmingham, and in London, I was at the local pool recently, and it was something like £200 for a series of lessons, and I thought, no one can afford that! I worked a lot with the ASA [Amateur Swimming Association] and the GLL, who run a lot of the leisure centres, and off the back of that they started offereing swimming lessons for £1, and it was a massive success. But there are also things that can be done like offering special classes for Muslim women who maybe aren't comfortable exposing their skin, or bringing in children from inner city environments.”

Rather astonishingly, Ayo's broadcasting career began when he was asked to take up the job on Blue Peter while still working as a humble runner for the BBC. At the time, he barely knew a thing about the show itself, let alone about presenting it!

“For the first three years it was really difficult. I grew up in quite a rough part of Birmingham, and although I was lucky enough to go to university, I think that was the first time I'd been completely surrounded by upper middle class people. On one level that was great because I was learning a lot, but on another level, I couldn't identify with many people. Often people would write scripts for me and I'd have to change a lot of it because it just didn't suit the way I spoke. But I'd like to think that was part of why I was asked to do it – because I came in with a fresh pair of eyes and did things my own way, and that brought something unique to the show.”

On taking up the position, Ayo made history as the very first black male presenter in fifty years of Blue Peter, and has since joined a growing chorus of voices calling for better representation in the media. For him though, this is an issue that's about more than just race.

“One of the major draws of this job for me is the chance to inspire audiences, and that's why I'm still on Inside Out. I want to build up the voice of Birmingham, because I think there's so few Brummies out there, particularly from ethnic minorities, who can really fly the flag for the city and the West Midlands in general. We've got such a rich variety of culture in this region and this city, and I really want to be at the forefront of that while the city is developing. Hopefully in the next few years, it will be one of the most exciting cities in the country.”

Inside Out West Midlands returns to BBC One on Monday 12 September at 19:30. Episode 1 is now available to catch up on BBC iPlayer at bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07qbjf8.