I used jokes as my sword and shield against school bullies
The hero in Lenny Henry’s new kids’ book shrugs off the bullies to save the world – and the author reveals he suffered racist abuse as a child, but found a way to use humour as a defence. He tells LISA SALMON more
BEING funny is what’s made Sir Lenny Henry’s fame and fortune. But when he was a child, his wit served what was, at the time, an even more valuable purpose – it stopped the bullies that plagued him.
The young Lenny realised that making the bullies at his school laugh stopped them attacking him, so he used his wit as a crafty defence. And now the comedian has included bullying in his new children’s book, The Boy With Wings, in which the hero is targeted by school bullies – but realises saving the world is a bigger priority than his waste-of-space tormentors.
“I was bullied at school – mainly because of racism. At one point in my school career I was bullied every day and it went on for ages,” Lenny remembers. “But I discovered if you make jokes about the bully and being bullied, you might get people to be on your side.
“Jokes are like a sword and a shield, you can defend yourself with them.”
In Lenny’s book, which is aimed at children from the age of about nine years, the hero, Tunde, sprouts wings and learns he’s all that stands between earth and total destruction. “Tunde, who’s bullied because he’s black and he has a beaky nose, makes jokes,” says Lenny. “But he’s good at sport and he can run, and he’s got friends who back him. If you can, you need to be able to communicate and make friends, because that makes a big difference – I did that through humour.”
As well as shining a light on bullying in the book, Lenny strongly believed his central character should be black, because although he was a voracious reader himself as a child, none of the characters in the books he read looked like him.
“I grew up reading things like Just William, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven and Jennings,” he recalls, “and although I enjoyed those stories and I could put myself in them in my imagination, there was never anybody that looked like me in them there were never any Afro-Caribbean British kids in them, so it was always a bit of a reach for me to be in a Jennings story or a Tom’s Midnight Garden story. I would’ve loved to have seen a character like me in them. I was very aware, although I didn’t really care at the time, that there wasn’t anybody like me in those stories.
“So cut to me with my daughter, reading all these stories to her almost every bedtime, and realising that even in the Nineties there
weren’t very many stories with black kids in them. So when this opportunity came, I just decided there was going to be a black protagonist and he was going to have friends of colour, and someone was going to be in a wheelchair – it was going to be an inclusive story, so kids could go ‘Wow, I’m in this!”’.
But how did this famous 63-yearold comedian, who co-founded Comic Relief and is now also an accomplished actor – he’s spent much of the last two years filming Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV series in New Zealand, and is currently filming the prequel to The Witcher – know what kids more than 50 years younger than him want to read?
“I didn’t know that kids would be able to relate to what I was writing, but I did think about what I liked when I was nine to 12 – Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, Billy the Cat, the Mighty Thor, The Avengers,” he says. His book even has a comic strip at the end, drawn by the renowned Marvel and DC comics artist Mark Buckingham, because, like many of the kids of his generation, Lenny also loved reading adventure comics.
Like many children’s books, the Boy with Wings subtly carries a handful of important life lessons that children would do well to absorb, including that bullying is wrong and the importance of kindness. But Henry certainly didn’t want to ram any moral codes down kids’ throats, stressing that escapism and adventure are the important things about his book.
“You have to try and grip the kid as quickly as possible with the story, and if there are any messages in there like ‘be kind to people’ and ‘don’t bully people’, they should be submerged – you don’t want to be doing that in the middle of an adventure story,” he stresses.
Henry has already started penning his second children’s book, after getting a “fantastic” early reaction to The Boy with Wings and its “adventuresomeness”. So will the hero in his next book be a black child too?
“That’s a good question, no-one’s ever asked me that before – they never asked Charles Dickens or Stephen King whether their heroes were black or white, did they?” he says, wryly. “I suppose black authors are compelled to continually explain themselves about who or what they choose to write about.
“The next story is about two mixedrace twins, but I think a person of colour will always be front and centre in my books, because that’s who I am, and when I was a kid I wanted to read about people like me.
“But the books are for everybody, not just for black kids – they’re for all kids.”
I grew up reading things like Just William, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven... although I enjoyed those stories and I could put myself in them in my imagination, there was never anybody that looked like me in them
Lenny Henry, left, on his childhood reading habits