Henry the great

Sitting in a meeting room in The Clarence Hotel, Lenny Henry is in slightly downbeat mood. Despite having retired to bed at an early hour the previous evening, he has a splitting headache. “It feels like Arnold Schwarzenegger has got my head and is doing that to it,” he says, making a squeezing motion.

Oh dear. Looking for a happy topic to lift the mood, I mention that a couple of nights ago I caught an episode of Lenny’s Britain, the BBC TV show in which the comedian travelled around the UK, examining the role humour plays in various facets of life, from family to the workplace.
“It’s strange, someone said it was a Down Your Way for the noughties,” says Lenny. “I think Down Your Way was a series back in the day where somebody went in amongst the people of the country to talk to them. We did it in conjunction with Open University, and it was about trying to suss out where we are as far as humour is concerned.
“What are we laughing at right now? Are we PC or has that bypassed most of us? It was fascinating to do. I’m not sure whether there were any solutions or not; the questions were far more interesting. As always with these things, the journey was immensely satisfying, I loved it. I liked being out and about with the people; I found that their reaction to me and my reaction to them bred comedy. People were naturally funny with me, it was great.”
As it happens, Henry has enlisted the services of Irish comedy writers in the past – Jason Byrne and the writing partnership of Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews have contributed material to his shows at different stages.
“Jason used to be my support act,” remembers Lenny. “We used to hang out a lot, and I just find him incredibly funny. I asked that he come and write on Lenny Henry In Pieces. So we would spend a lot of time in a room together being silly. He’s probably one of the silliest people I’ve ever met, he’s really good fun. Then with Graham and Arthur, they wrote some material for a radio show that I did, which was an abortive affair.
“It went out once, and it was about a club where they had live bands and comedians and so on. My idea was that the bar staff would be funny, and the manager would be funny, and the girls in the queue would be funny, and all that kind of stuff. It didn’t really work, but Graham and Arthur wrote for that. They wrote some very surreal barmen, who had these incredibly discursive and weird conversations as they were serving people drinks. I thought they were very funny, and said, ‘Those guys should be in the show’, and they were.”
“It was a one-off, hour long show on Radio One, and we had James on playing ‘Sit Down’, and people like Jeff Green and Fiona Allen. Originally it was going to be a series, but unfortunately it didn’t happen.”
Set to play the Bulmers International Comedy Festival this September (his performance at the Olympia will be the culmination of an Irish tour), Henry’s new show is called Where You From?, which, in addition to the energetic, character-driven comedy that is his trademark, finds the comedian touching on some weighty issues.
“I do a segment called ‘What’s Going On’,” explains Lenny, “because I think it’s important to talk about subjects like global warming, and the fact that we’re getting this weird weather all over the world. Right now, in Kingston, Jamaica, there are polar bears walking down the street looking for places to live (laughs). I also talk about prison overcrowding, and black on black violence – how weird is that? Blacks kids shooting other black kids. Haven’t we got enough people against us? They’re just helping out the Ku Klux Klan!
“I also play a character called Daniel, a young guy who’s serving in Iraq and has been to Afghanistan. Of the old characters, Mr. Lister talks about working in a shop in Wilsden. Rachel is his wife, and it has the ennui of an older woman being caught in, not a loveless marriage, but a bit of a lust-less marriage. And Wolfman talks about what a pain in the arse it is to be old.
“So I’ve updated those characters for this show. And the stand-up is wide-ranging and joyous, and if there’s a bald man in the audience, I will lick his head to see if it tastes like chicken! I reserve the right to fuck around.”
A perennially busy man (he recently completed a degree in English Literature with the Open University), aside from comedy, Henry has also found time to present a number of programmes on one of his great passions, music. One such occasion saw him front a South Bank Show on the history of funk.
“I’m a funkateer,” he nods. “I also did New Soul Nation about British R ‘n’ B. The South Bank Show special I did was called ‘Lenny Henry Hunts The Funk’ and I got to meet George Clinton, who was a whole day late for the interview. But he was very cool. And we interviewed Bootsy Collins in the Wapping Bay Centre. He blew all the speakers in the entire shop with his bass guitar, it was priceless. I also got to talk to Chuck D, so it was just a brilliant experience.
“I like documentaries, and Lenny’s Britain to me is just the start of a new phase. I’d like to do something on James Brown, and I’d like to talk to Prince, so I think there’s endless things to do.”
Lenny also once sang back-up vocals on a Kath Bush album.
“That’s right, The Red Shoes,” he reflects. “I don’t know why she asked me to do it, but it was great. I think she saw me at Amnesty, and she said, ‘You can sing, do you wanna come and do some vocals?’ I said yeah, so I sang on a backing track with her and Prince, who played guitar on the song. Kate was lovely, she made scrambled eggs.”
And on that culinary note, Lenny Henry heads off to get a Thai green curry lunch and some Panadol.
Lenny Henry plays the Olympia, Dublin as part of the Bulmers International Comedy Festival on September 15. He also plays the Millennium Forum, Derry (September 11); the Royal Theatre, Castlebar (12); UCH, Limerick (13); and Black Box, Galway (14).