SIR LENNY’S NEW MOOD Lenny Henry on his new direction and love
For years he was known as a funnyman, but Sir Lenny Henry has now found joy in acting and writing. As he publishes his memoir, he talks to GH’S Ella Dove about love, loneliness and laughter
Lenny Henry has just admitted that he once accosted Aretha Franklin in an airport. ‘I did. I ran up to her and went, “Ahhh, I love you!”’ he says in the high-pitched, adoring tone of a young fan. His impression, as expected, is spot on. He is, after all, the king of character comedy, with well-known inventions over the years including Brixton wide boy Delbert Wilkins and the soul-singing ‘one-man sex machine’ Theophilus P Wildebeeste. ‘I’ve been in a room with Kate Bush and screamed, too,’ he adds. He’s telling me this as someone who is often on the receiving end of such adoration, having spent more than 40 years on TV. ‘I grew up in the public eye, so I get it. I understand it,’ he says. ‘People feel like they know you. But that doesn’t stop it from being weird sometimes.’
Lenny grew up in Dudley, West Midlands. One of seven children, he was raised in a strict Jamaican household, in ‘an old house with an outside toilet’. He describes his mother, Winnie, as ‘the Jamaican Wonder Woman, who had worked very hard from a very young age’, and who, as a result, didn’t take any nonsense from her children. ‘If you did something wrong, you got hit for it,’ he says, ‘so I lived in a kind of heightened state, thinking, “I better not do something wrong because Mama will throw a chair at me.”’ He pauses. ‘She did that once, you know. She also hit me with a shoe, and one time she hit me with a pan.’
I am momentarily shocked by this admission, but then I catch sight of his expression, realising there is a warmth, a fond nostalgia, to his smile. When his mum died in 1998, he recalls, he went to a London restaurant called Jerk City, where he ordered his favourite meal that she used to cook when he was growing up – red pea soup with mutton, dumplings and Jamaican hard food. ‘After three mouthfuls, I burst into tears,’ he says. ‘Because I missed my mum. It just reminded me of her. Food can do that.’
Young Lenny was shy. He realised the power of humour early on, and used it as a way to deflect school bullies. ‘If you can make people laugh, you’re breaking down barriers,’ he says. Aged 16, he skipped school to audition for ITV talent show New Faces, the competition that would catapult him to success. But he didn’t tell his mother he was auditioning. When he got home, she was waiting. Anticipating her anger – or perhaps a thwack with the nearest kitchen utensil – he tentatively explained where he’d been. ‘She looked at me and said, “If you wan’ come in the house and eat your dinner tonight, you do this audition for me right now!’’’ he parrots in a thick Jamaican accent. ‘So I did. Mama and my brothers and sisters behind her were all applauding. I was genuinely surprised by their reaction.’
This moment, he says, was the first time he realised he could carve a career in show business. He has now been a regular on our screens for five decades, from his early days in The Black And White Minstrel Show and Tiswas with Chris Tarrant to Comic Relief, which he co-founded with Richard Curtis in 1985, and The Lenny Henry Show.
‘The first five or six years in the business were all about scrabbling to the shore without being eaten by the sharks,’ he says. ‘I spent a lot of time always talking to older comedians about what I was doing wrong. As a young comic, you’d have thought they’d dismiss me, but they didn’t. There’s nothing an older comedian likes more than to say, “You sit there, lad, and let me tell you what I learned doing the working men’s clubs.” Some of it is boring, but some of it is actually useful. I think it’s a clever thing to seek out people you can learn from. I’ve been a mentor, too, and it’s a really good thing; you surprise yourself with what you know.’
THE FAME GAME
Now he’s 61, it’s clear Lenny has learned a thing or two. He sits across from me in the library of a west London hotel eating breakfast, an imposing man with a grey-and-white-flecked beard and an air of caution beneath his warmth. A seasoned professional when it comes to speaking to the press, he chooses his words very carefully. At the start of his career, interviews ‘were just like fun therapy for me’, he says. ‘I’d say anything and everything. There was no forethought.’ Now, he thinks ‘it’s about having an edit filter’.
Were there times when he struggled with fame? ‘There were ups and downs, all the way through,’ he says. ‘It takes a while to distinguish between real friends and acquaintances: are they just hanging out
It sounds simplistic, but you have to go through the terrible times to get to the good times
with you because you’re on the telly? I was always reminded of that when I went back to Dudley.’ He admits that his five years in The Black And White Minstrel Show ‘buggered things up with family and friends for quite a long time. I wasn’t blacking up by any means, but there I was in a show that was innately weird. It shouldn’t have been on, really. My family are black people from the Caribbean, and my three best friends were white guys, who were all completely freaked out and didn’t know what to say. So I was in this weird position. I had what I call this duvet of depression. I didn’t know how to get out of it. But, when I left the show, suddenly that duvet lifted. Life had changed. I was happy. And so I had happiness, for a while.’ He pauses, gives a wistful smile. ‘That was good.’
Comedy can be ‘a bit lonely’. ‘It’s just you in your pants, drinking tea in the dressing room. And it can feel isolating. I’ve had a lot of that in the past 45-year period of doing stand-up. I was always jealous of Dawn [French] and Jennifer [Saunders], or Rik [Mayall] and Ade [Edmondson] because they were a gang, whereas I was always on my own. So I loved gluing on to them and being part of them.’
So much so, in fact, that he married Dawn French: a high-profile pairing that spanned 25 years, ending in 2010. The couple have an adopted daughter, Billie, who is now 27. ‘I’m not a perfect dad,’ he admits. ‘I think I was a bit blokey in that I was very work-orientated. But I knew there had to be lots of hugging, and I just wanted everything to be cool and dandy. If it wasn’t, I’d think, “Well, how can we make this better?”’
As a successful duo, Lenny and Dawn were very much in the public eye during their marriage. ‘Sustaining relationships of any kind [became] problematic due to interventions by the public,’ he writes in his book. ‘There were some hurtful things. Having [a photo of] your front door in the newspaper, and having the National Front come round your house. But my life has changed now.’
FROM STAND-UP TO SHAKESPEARE
It certainly has. For one thing, Lenny no longer sees himself as ‘just’ a comedian. ‘I’m an actor, a writer, a broadcaster,’ he says. ‘I love the fact I did comedy for such a long time, but it can put pressure on you. If you’re doing the same thing over and over, you can feel fatigued with it.’
‘Challenge is good,’ he says, adding,
‘If you get stuck in a trench, it becomes your grave.’ So, in 2009, he made his Shakespearean debut as Othello in the Northern Broadsides’ touring production. Several TV and stage roles have followed, from the BBC’S 2015 fictionalised account of his childhood, Danny And The Human
Zoo, to The Comedy Of Errors National Theatre and the Theatre Royal Stratford East’s acclaimed production of King Hedley II in June this year. ‘What I love about acting is you’re part of a group,’ he says. ‘There’s somebody outside of your little world, watching you very carefully. It’s more protected. And it’s exhilarating.’
But Othello was not only Lenny’s catalyst to serious acting. It was also how he met his partner, theatre producer Lisa Makin, who used to work for the company that produced his debut role. ‘Lisa’s great; we get on very well,’ he says. The couple have been together for six years, and while Lenny keeps his cards close to his chest, it’s obvious he is very happy.
So, what’s next for Sir Lenny? Well, his autobiography, Who Am I, Again?, covering the early part of his life, is due out in October, and a UK tour will follow. ‘You know, life is like chapters of a book,’ he muses. ‘It sounds simplistic, but you have to go through the terrible times to get to the good, the triumphant times. You can only see that through hindsight; what that gives you is a sense of perspective. It makes you think, “Actually, my life is fine.” When you learn to scale your problems down and put them to one side, you realise it’s going to be alright.’
It seems, I remark, that he’s in the middle of a good chapter right now. ‘Do you know what? Yeah,’ is his immediate reply. He takes a bite of toast and gives me a wide, genuine smile. ‘I feel pretty good.’
Lenny Henry’s autobiography Who Am I, Again? (Faber & Faber) is out 3 October. An Evening With Lenny Henry tours the UK from 20 October to 29 November. For tickets, visit lennyhenryontour.net
I’m not a perfect dad... but I knew there had to be lots of hugging