AN anti-knife campaigner who inspired a BBC show has died aged 61.

       Ray Lewis got hundreds of disadvantaged children into elite private schools.

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       Anti-knife campaigner Ray Lewis has died aged 61

       The ex-prison chief set up Eastside Young Leaders’ Academy in 2002.

       The programme, in Forest Gate, East London, won 270 students places at schools including Eton, Rugby and Stowe.

       Then Mayor of London Boris Johnson appointed Guyana-born Ray as a youth crime adviser in 2008 and he joined our Beat the Blades anti-knife campaign in 2018.

       His work inspired this year’s BBC Three comedy drama Boarders about five inner-city teens being offered scholarships.

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       EYLA co-founder Anne Collard said: “His legacy and light will live on.”

       Patrick Derham, former headmaster of Rugby and Westminster School, hailed dad-of-three Ray as a “visionary”.

       The Sun On Sunday leads the Beat The Blades campaign to tackle London's knife crime epidemic