Ashley Banjo was honoured to win the Kids' Choice Award for UK Inspirational Role Model.
Ashley Banjo
The 29-year-old Diversity dancer accepted the Nickelodeon annual award for his ground-breaking dance initiatives, sell-out nationwide arena tours, prime-time TV appearances including 'Dancing On Ice', 'Got To Dance', and 'Britain's Got Talent' and appearing on 'China's Got Talent', where Ashley's dance routines have entertained and amazed the world over.
Speaking exclusively to Bang Showbiz, Ashley - who is following in the footsteps of Previous Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards UK honorary slime winners Olly Murs, Mo Farah and Andy Murray - said the famous orange blimp statuette will be taking "pride of place" at Diversity's dance studio.
He said: "I think it's something I'll be keeping at the studio, especially to win it for inspirational role model, it's good to have it there in the context of where we teach all the kids and where we see kids come through the door. So yeah it will be pride of place at our studio."
Ashley was joined by fellow Diversity members and Nickelodeon presenters Jordan Banjo and Perri Kiely at their dance studios as they presented him with the award before he was given the ultimate Nickelodeon honour - slime!
Speaking about the moment he was covered in the green goo, he said: "That's putting it mildly! I got absolutely drenched, absolutely covered head to toe."
With next year marking 10 years since Diversity won 'Britain's Got Talent', Nickelodeon presented Ashley with the UK Inspirational Role Model award in recognition of his career as one of the country's most creative entertainers and the group now use their talents to inspire young dancers to follow their dreams.
He explained: "It doesn't feel like 10 years at all, but we've all changed a lot and learnt so much so there's a lot of kids now that have never not known a dance crew to be on telly.
"For me it's weird because when I grew up, boys dancing was not necessarily a cool thing so nowadays there are kids out there that have never not known a group of guys to be street dancers on telly so that's really cool."
And he admitted that the dance troupe have always stood out from other performers and it felt "amazing" to be recognised for their achievements.
He said: "It's weird for me to be winning an award so to speak because of the nature of what diversity and I do we don't really fit too many shapes so to speak. What is the saying? A round peg square hole? We perform and we do tours on TV but we're a bit stand alone. So to receive an award to say that people connect to what you do and it inspires people especially kids, it does feel amazing. We've been lucky enough to be doing this for 10 years now so we feel very privileged."
Viewers can watch the hilarious full video of Ashley being slimmed during the 2018 Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards on March 25 at 10:30am on Nickelodeon.