Lenny drops the laughs to get serious about Windrush
This week, there are two BBC Two programmes that tell the story of immigrants in Britain from the 1950s onwards. The first is Back in Time for Birmingham, about the experience of British Asians, in which a family gamely submits to dressing in funny costumes, eating some terrible food of the time (Spam) and living in a house with orange decor.
The second is Lenny Henry’s Caribbean Britain, and it is a more inquiring, deeper dive into the period. Henry – once known for Tiswas, Comic Relief and his own comedy shows – has cut a serious figure in recent years. The programme began with him walking down his old street in Dudley, doing an affectionate impression of his mum’s instruction to her children to “h’integrate”. Black people of Caribbean heritage have achieved great things in the arts, he said.
“But as I’ve got older, I’ve tried to think: what does integration actually mean?” Henry asked. “Does it mean we, as Caribbean people, have to sacrifice our culture? How much of my culture has Britain absorbed?”
He didn’t answer the first question, at least in the first episode of this twopart documentary featuring a wealth of contributors, but Caribbean culture was illustrated well. First, there was calypso music – taken up by Lance Percival on That Was The Week That Was – and there was ska. White kids fell
for ska and began copying the “rude boy” fashions, which led to some confusion, as Levi Roots wryly noted: “Turn around to the right and there were the other kind of skinheads – they weren’t the fashion skinheads, they were the fascist skinheads who wanted to rip your head off.”
The programme showed us the work of pioneers in the arts: textile artist Althea Mcnish, abstract painter Sir Frank Bowling, theatrical agent Edric Connor. It was enlightening to learn about them, because they are not household names. Unlike Floella Benjamin, whose presence can still light up the screen (seeing a clip of her on Playschool teaching children how to tell the time led me on a whole other train of thought about why no equivalent show exists now, but let’s save that one for another day).
This was all set against the racial politics of the time, which made for less pleasant viewing. Windrush arrivals being denied lodgings, violence on the streets of Notting Hill. In this context, the jubilation that greeted the West Indies’ victory at The Oval in 1976 made perfect sense.
People these days fret about small acts of everyday sexism. Back in Billie Jean King’s day, the sexism was blatant inequality, huge pay disparities and the commentator on her 1973 Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs (she won) telling an audience of millions: “And here comes Billie Jean King, a very attractive young lady. Sometimes you get the feeling if she ever let her hair grow down to her shoulders and took her glasses off, you’d have somebody vying for a Hollywood screen test.” In Amol Rajan Interviews Billie Jean King (BBC Two), she said she had not heard that commentary until 25 years later. Her reaction: “Are you kidding me?”
For his interview series, Rajan has done Sir Ian Mckellen, Novak Djokovic and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. In each he’s cultivated an air of supreme relaxation, but has done his homework beforehand. He’s always respectful, never confrontational. And King was a gift, because she is an inspirational figure whose life has been eventful on both professional and personal fronts.
The interview took place courtside at Wimbledon, with Rajan introducing King as “arguably the first female sports superstar” and “a gamechanger in the original sense”. She was part of the “Original Nine” players who launched a breakaway women’s tour in 1970 in protest at the inequality in prize money.
King was “outed” in 1981, when her past affair with a woman became public. She gave a press conference, but lost her endorsements overnight. Yet she weathered this storm, just like all the others. King spoke about her personal life with the ease of someone who has had 51 years of therapy.
Her achievements – including 12 Grand Slams – are remarkable, but what was so striking about this interview was that she has lost none of her drive to change things for the better. Aged 78, she appears to have as much energy as ever. And she came across as wise.
On the hot topic of trans rights she was measured, which people rarely are – she believes in following the science and does not want any player to have an unfair physical advantage, but she also supported the 1970s trans player Renée Richards who successfully sued to join the women’s tour. But few will ever play like King; in Rajan’s words, she gave us “simply some of the best tennis the world has ever seen.”
Lenny Henry’s Caribbean Britain ★★★★
Amol Rajan Interviews Billie Jean King ★★★★