HOW LENNY’S WORK DRIVE WAS NO JOKE
Rising To The Surface Lenny Henry
Faber €19
★★★★★
In the 1980s and 1990s, Lenny Henry seemed to be everywhere – probably because he was. The English comic fronted numerous television shows, in which he cackled and caroused as Delbert, Theophilus P Wildebeeste, PC Ganja, Deakus and, occasionally, himself. He toured as a stand-up, hosted Comic Relief, sang, acted in TV dramas and made movies.
Such ubiquity came at a price, as this second instalment of his autobiography makes plain. Even the title alludes to a constant feeling of struggling to keep his head above water.
Henry excavated his childhood, complicated paternity and prejudice-riven early career in his first memoir, Who Am I, Again? The follow-up takes him from the end of the pier – and the 1970s – into the heartlands of alternative comedy and prime-time stardom.
He emerges from the heady swirl of fame and manic productivity as a man relentlessly pursuing validation through work, often at the expense of his own happiness. Nothing is ever quite enough. When he overreaches in making disastrous Hollywood movie True Identity, Disney head honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg summons Henry to his office and tells him, ‘Your movie’s not going to make any money. It’s going to tank’. The sense of failure cuts deep. He grafts even harder to salve the sense of shame.
In the most poignant and self-lacerating sections of the book, Henry’s beloved mother is gravely ill, yet he accepts a tour of Australia. She dies while he’s on the other side of the world, and he crumbles. ‘It drove things home to me: I’d been neglectful these last few years, neglectful of true friends and my close family.’ Later, he writes: ‘All my life I’d done this, leaving
the people closest to me behind’.
Race remains a live issue. A slur yelled by a ‘fan’ at a meet-and-greet shakes him to the core. His weight, too, is a regular source of torment as he yo-yos from crash diet to comfort eating. When he plays petite singer-songwriter Prince in a sketch, he watches the footage and thinks, ‘You don’t look like Prince, you look like a hippo trapped in a purple circus tent’. He yearns to launch a straight music career but is honest about his shortcomings: ‘I just couldn’t sing or write well enough’. A dressing-down from legendary producer Trevor Horn confirms his doubts.
There are cameos by everyone from Tracey Ullman (on Zoom) to Kate Bush (‘She made me scrambled eggs… and a big mug of tea’), as well as vivid behind-the-curtain insights into comedy. He sheds less light on his 25-year marriage to Dawn French – they wed in 1984 and adopted a daughter, Billie – but reading between the lines it was often strained.
Though the tension between success and contentment crackles on almost every page, this is a highly enjoyable book: funny, pacy and sharp. Testament to Henry’s distinctive voice, the tonal shifts from comic to serious rarely jar. Yet the last line suggests that the catharsis of setting it all down in print is only partial. ‘I let the work take over,’ he writes. ‘Silly sod.’