Co-founder of Comic Relief, Lenny Henry is going back to his roots for his next venture – a UK stand-up tour called Still At Large, which begins in May – his first in 17 years
Bursting into our living rooms in the late 1970s on Tiswas, with crazy characters like Algernon Razzmatazz and Trevor McDoughnut, Sir Lenny Henry was an instant hit. Mixing comedy with compassion, in 1985 he co-founded Comic Relief with Richard Curtis, then raising laughs with The Lenny Henry Show for two decades, as well as starring as Gareth Blackstock in BBC sitcom Chef!
But Sir Lenny, 67, says he found his “sixth gear” in mid-life. He explains: “When I was 50 I thought ‘Is there a sixth gear?’ My mum was proud of me and I bought her a house. I did Comic Relief and I thought ‘what else is there?’ I always turned down theatre as there is no money in it. You can’t run a house on theatre money.
“You look at King Lear or Hamlet and you think ‘they are a lot of lines. How do you learn that?’ But when I was 50 I did a documentary series for Radio 4 and the first one was about Shakespeare. I was encouraged for four hours to learn this piece. I was told to learn the words and I got to the end and I was so excited. We got the dates for Othello and I was suddenly doing it and it was an amazing experience.”
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Despite plaudits for his Shakespearean acting, Lenny is going back to his roots for his next venture – a UK stand-up tour called Still At Large, which begins in May – his first in 17 years. It’s also Red Nose Day on Friday and, while he no longer hosts Comic Relief, he remains honorary life president.
All of this is a long way from Sir Lenny’s tough beginnings in Dudley, West Midlands, the fifth of seven children and the first of his family to be born in the UK. He recalls his Jamaican immigrant parents Winifred and Winston Henry, who are now dead, being tough disciplinarians. He says: “In our house you got beat for everything – whether you dropped a glass or were chopping firewood or if you were by the fire because you did not want to go outside. I remember once my mum hit me for such a long time. I hid under the table. It was like ‘what is she going to do next?’ It was quite tough growing up in our house. If there had been ChildLine I would have had my own parking space.”
Sir Lenny, whose stories run the gamut of life, with all its highs and lows, comedy and tragedy, turns to a problem currently troubling performers in the West End. Drunken audience members are, apparently, ruining shows by singing along, “like football hooligans.” He says: “It has been in musicals, but I am worried it is going to start happening in serious plays.”
Sir Lenny’s first stand up in a long while, it may be that he finds the hecklers have changed when he goes on the road. But he has scrapped some of his famous TV characters, as they are no longer appropriate for modern audiences. He says: “I can’t do Theophilus P. Wildebeeste anymore. He was so rude. He would say lines like ‘Prince Andrew gives us all a bad name. What do you mean he can’t sweat? I sweat all night long and twice on Sundays.’”
And he admits he once had a dressing down from a fellow Black actor for some of his own Black characters. He says: “I got told off by Gyearbuour Asante who played Matthew in Desmond’s [Ch4 sitcom]. He once told me ‘Lenny, I have got to speak to you. Why are you doing this character in grass skirts with markings on his face? Do you know it is insulting for someone like me? You don’t sound like you are someone from Zimbabwe. You sound like you have not learned your dialect properly.’ I was really moved by it.”
At first, Sir Lenny kept the character, without the skirt and face paint, but he later dropped it altogether. He also recalls his worst ever gig when his audience blacked up to mimic one of his characters, at a time when one of his catchphrases was ‘Katanga, my friend!’ He says: “I walked on stage at this naval base and the whole front row was sailors blacked up in grass skirts with make-up on. They were doing it as they thought I’d be happy. I was shaking and I left the stage and asked if they could leave. They left and they all came to me after.
“They were really sad and sorry that they had upset me, but having seen me on TV they thought it was going to be OK. I was really upset about it. It made me really think about what kind of character should you do. You should not do anything that upsets, embarrasses or triggers people and so it made me change.”
But one of Sir Lenny’s worst experiences in a theatre came not when he was performing, but when he was in the audience watching a feminist play with his partner, Lisa Makin. He recalls: “All the women wore masks and carried big sticks. This was a great night but people did not have a clue what the play was about.
“About 20 minutes from the interval I noticed the woman next to me looked a bit odd. She was turning green. Lisa asked if she was alright and the lady [is sick]. Luckily for all of us she was holding a pint glass which was empty. She filled the glass with projectile vomiting. Lisa is a good person and took the woman and got her cleaned up. I was sat there holding a pint glass full of vomit.
“You can’t hold a pint of vomit and look cool. Harry Styles can probably get away with it but I can’t.” But while Harry may be able to outcool him, few people can outshine Sir Lenny when it comes to big heart, diverse talent and good, old fashioned laughs.
*Lenny Henry: Still At Large tours the UK from 5 May – 28 June 2026. Tickets and venues: https://www.fane.co.uk/lenny-henry
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