Lenny Henry

Sir Lenworth George Henry, CBE (born August 29, 1958), known as ***Lenny Henry***, is a British stand-up comedian, actor, singer, writer, and television presenter, known for co-founding charity Comic Relief, and presenting various television programmes.

### Early Career

Henry's first manager was Robert Luff, who signed him in 1975 and gave him the opportunity to perform as part of the Luff-produced touring stage version of The Black and White Minstrel Show. In July 2009, Lenny Henry stated he was contractually obliged to perform and regretted his part in the show.

His earliest television appearance was on the New Faces talent show, which he won in 1975 with an impersonation of Stevie Wonder. The following year he appeared with Norman Beaton in LWT's sitcom The Fosters, Britain's first comedy series with predominantly black performers. His formative years were spent in working men's clubs, where he impersonated mainly white characters such as the Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em character Frank Spencer (whom he impersonated on New Faces). He also made guest appearances on television programmes including Celebrity Squares, Seaside Special and The Ronnie Corbett Show.

### 1980s

In 1980, Henry performed in Summer Season in Blackpool with Cannon and Ball and has since said that "the summer season was the first time [he] felt that [his] act had received a proper response from an audience". Around the same time, he co-hosted the children's programme Tiswas from 1978 until 1981, and subsequently performed and wrote for the show Three of a Kind.

Also in 1980, he teamed up with The Comic Strip where he met his wife, comedian Dawn French. She encouraged him to move over to the fledgling alternative comedy scene, where he established a career as a stand-up comedy performer and character comedian.

He introduced characters who both mocked and celebrated black British culture, such as Theophilus P. Wildebeeste (an homage to Teddy Pendergrass using the 'TP' initials), Brixton pirate radio disc jockey DJ Delbert Wilkins and Trevor MacDoughnut (a parody of Trevor McDonald). His stand-up material, which sold well on LP, owed much to the writing abilities of Kim Fuller. During this time he also spent three years as a DJ on BBC Radio 1, playing soul and electro tracks and introducing some of the characters that he would later popularise on television. He made a guest appearance in the final episode of The Young Ones as The Postman, in 1984.

#### The Lenny Henry Show (1984-85, 1987-88 & 1995)

The first series of ***The Lenny Henry Show*** appeared on the BBC on September 4, 1984. The show featured stand up, spoofs like his send up of Michael Jackson's Thriller video, and many of the characters he had developed during Summer Season, including Theophilus P. Wildebeeste and Delbert Wilkins. A principal scriptwriter for his television and stage shows during the 1990s was Jon Canter. The Lenny Henry Show ran periodically for a further 19 years in various incarnations. He performed impressions such as Tina Turner, Prince, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Run DMC, among others.

This original version of the show ran for two series on BBC 1 in 1984 and 1985 and each series had six episodes. A 40-minute special was aired in December 1987. Recurring guests include Nicholas Lyndhurst and Robbie Coltrane. Bands featured on the 1984 series included Musical Youth and Second Image.

Two further series broadcast in 1987-88 kept the same name, but followed a sitcom (rather than sketch-based) format. This version began on October 27, 1987, and starred Henry as Delbert Wilkins, a well-meaning but trouble-prone pirate radio DJ of the Brixton Broadcasting Corporation. At the end, Wilkins went "legit", gaining a job with the BBC World Service, and a son.

The show was revived for one series from April 1, 1995; it failed to pick up audiences and was axed not long after.

### 1990s

In the early 1990s, Henry starred in the Hollywood film True Identity, in which his character pretended to be a white person (using make-up, prostheses, and a wig) to avoid the mob. The film was not commercially successful. In 1991, he starred in a BBC drama alongside Robbie Coltrane called Alive and Kicking, in which he played a heroin addict, which was based on a true story.

#### Bernard and the Genie (1991)

On December 23, 1991, he starred in ***Bernard and the Genie***, a fantasy comedy-drama television film directed by Paul Weiland and written by Richard Curtis, alongside Alan Cumming and Rowan Atkinson. It takes its inspiration from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, and follows Bernard Bottle (Cumming), an art dealer who is not having a good day.

A genie (Henry) is punished by an evil wizard by being confined to a lamp somewhere in Arabia. 2000 years later in England Bernard Bottle an art dealer, who has just been sacked by his nasty and greedy boss (Atkinson) and then discovered his girlfriend has gone off with his so called best mate taking almost everything from his flat with her, decides to give the lamp a rub. The next thing he knows the genie is loose and soon Bernard befriends him and finds the genie can give him as many wishes as he likes. Things start to go horribly wrong though when Bernard decides to wish for one of the most famous paintings in the world and the police think he has stolen it...

The film featured cameos by Melvyn Bragg, Bob Geldof, Gary Lineker, and Trevor McDonald.

#### Chef! (1993-96)

***Chef!*** is a British situation comedy starring Lenny Henry that aired as twenty episodes over three series from March 11, 1993 to December 30, 1996 on the BBC. The show was created and primarily written by Peter Tilbury based on an idea from Lenny Henry and produced for the BBC by Henry's production company, Crucial Films.

Henry starred as Gareth Blackstock, a talented, arrogant, tyrannical and obsessed chef who has endlessly inventive insults for his staff, unknowing customers, and almost anyone else he encounters. Chef Blackstock's traditional French cuisine with an eclectic flair is served at "Le Château Anglais," a gourmet restaurant in the English countryside that is one of the few in the United Kingdom to receive a two-star rating from Michelin. The chef's quest for perfection and his lack of awareness about the costs of that perfection mean that the restaurant is on the brink of financial collapse when he and his wife Janice (played by Caroline Lee-Johnson) buy it early in the first series. The establishment mostly remains on that brink, despite Janice's best efforts as manager, eventually coming under the control of the boorish Cyril Bryson (Dave Hill) in the final series.

Although focused on the restaurant's kitchen, the countryside (with its black market suppliers) and the Blackstocks' home life are also backdrops for the show; the chef's long hours mean that Janice is routinely neglected in the bedroom, and their plans for a family remain delayed.

Besides Gareth and Janice Blackstock, a third character, Everton Stonehead (played by Roger Griffiths), appears throughout all three series. Stonehead went to school with the chef and dreams of becoming a top chef himself. He bumbles through his early days in the kitchen, but eventually even develops a signature dish of his own.

#### Neverwhere (1996)

Henry was co-creator with Neil Gaiman and producer of the 1996 BBC drama serial ***Neverwhere***. The idea for the story came from a conversation between Gaiman and Henry about a possible television series. Henry suggested a story with tribes of homeless people in London. Gaiman was initially reluctant to commit, as he feared that making the homeless appear "cool" might cause more young people to attempt to emulate the characters, but decided that the effect could be avoided by making the story more removed from reality.

The urban fantasy was first aired on September 12, 1996 and ran for six episodes. The series is set in "London Below", a magical realm coexisting with the more familiar London, referred to as "London Above". Gaiman adapted the series into a novel, which was released on September 16, 1996.

Richard Mayhew (Gary Bakewell), a Scot living in London, encounters an injured girl named Door (Laura Fraser) on the street one night. Despite his fiancée's protests he decides to help her; upon doing so he ceases to exist on Earth and becomes real only to the denizens of 'London Below', whose inhabitants are generally invisible and non-existent to the people of 'London Above'. He loses his house, his job and nearly his mind as he travels London Below in an attempt to make sense out of it all, find a way back, and help Door survive as she is hunted down by hired assassins.

In London Below the various familiar names of London all take on a new significance: for example Knightsbridge becomes "Night's Bridge", a stone bridge whose darkness takes its toll in human life; The Angel, Islington is an actual angel (played by Peter Capaldi). London Below is a parallel world in and beneath the sewers. Its inhabitants are the homeless, but also people from other times, such as Roman legionaries and medieval monks, as well as fictional and fantastical characters.

Also in the cast are Paterson Joseph who plays the Marquis de Carabas, a trickster but friend of Door's, and based on the character Puss in Boots. Hywel Bennett and Clive Russell play the pair of assassins hunting for Door.

As well as the novelisation by Gaiman, the programme has been adapted into a comic book, for the stage, and a radio play.

#### Hope and Glory (1999-2000)

***Hope and Glory*** is a BBC television drama about a comprehensive school struggling with financial, staffing and disciplinary problems, and faced with closure. It starred Lenny Henry as maverick "Superhead" Ian George, enlisted to turn around the school's fortunes.

It was created by Lucy Gannon, who had previously created Soldier Soldier, and was inspired by a real head teacher named William Atkinson, who had turned around a secondary school in London which had been placed into special measures.

Ian George visits Hope Park Comprehensive School, which is in special measures, where the outgoing head (Peter Davison) breaks down during his farewell speech and delivers an emotional rant against the students, telling them how worthless they are.

After meeting staff and pupils at the school, in particular pupil Keeley Porter (Sarah French) and teacher Debbie "Debs" Bryan (Amanda Redman), George believes there is some hope for the school. He subsequently turns down a Governmental job to take over as the new Head. With the help of "Debs", who he appoints as Deputy Head, George rectified the issues.