David Dontoh

For a generation of television viewers David Dontoh was "Ghanaman", the struggling everyman of the GBC comedy-drama Obra, which competed with Osofo Dadzie for Sunday-night audiences in the 1980s and 1990s.

Discovery

David Kwame Dontoh was born in 1964. In 1980 he answered a newspaper advert from the National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) looking for people to train as actors. A student director, Alex Bannerman, cast him at short notice as the lead in a short film, The Way to Shame, when the original actor failed to turn up, and the assessors, including Mike Hagan, noticed him. He then starred in Gus: The Theatre Cat, adapted from T.S. Eliot and directed by George Andoh Wilson.

Television

Obra grew out of a stage production called Keteke and featured Grace Omaboe, Joe Eyison and Belinda Oku. With Omaboe he later hosted the storytelling show By the Fireside, and for a decade he was the "Agoro Master" of Agoro, a family quiz on Ghanaian history and culture, alongside Adwoa Yeboah Adjei. He has won best actor from the Entertainment Critics and Reviewers Association of Ghana several times and received the Ghana Peace Award in 2017.