Lenny Henry

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Sir Lenworth George Henry (born 29 August 1958) is a British stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and television presenter best known for co-founding Comic Relief and appearing in TV programs, including children's entertainment show Tiswas, sitcom Chef. The Magicians of BBC One.

He is currently the Chancellor of Birmingham City University.

Early life

Lenworth George Henry was born in Dudley, England, on August 29, 1958, to Winston Jervis Henry (1910–1978) and Winifred Louise Henry (1922–1998), who immigrated to Britain from Jamaica. Henry, the fifth of the family's children, was the first child of the family to be born in the United Kingdom. When Henry was ten years old, he began spending time with Albert Augustus "Bertie" Green (1927–2004), another Jamaican immigrant with whom his mother had a brief acquaintance when she first arrived in England from Jamaica. Henry was named after the doctor who gave him his baby.

Henry attended St John's Primary School and then The Blue Coat School in Dudley before completing his education at W.R. Tuson College in Preston, Lancashire.

Personal life

On the alternative comedy circuit, Henry French met Dawn French. They married in 1984 in Covent Garden, London, and have one child, Billie, who was adopted. After 25 years of marriage, French and Henry announced on April 6, 2010 that they were "amicably" separated. In 2010, they announced their divorce.

Henry obtained a BA Hons degree in English Literature from the Open University in 2007 and an MA in Screenwriting for TV and Film from Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2010. He then studied at the University of Philosophy (PhD) degree on the role of black people in the media. Henry was awarded a PhD in media arts for a thesis entitled Does the Coach Have to be Black? A Evidence-Based Enquiry into the Sports Film, Screenwriting, and Diversity.

Henry has been a vocal critic of British television's lack of ethnic diversity in its programs. During a speech to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in March 2014, he called minorities "appalling" and that he will continue to raise the issue publicly.

Henry is a lifelong fan of West Bromwich Albion Football Club.

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Career

Henry's formative years in comedy were spent in working men's clubs, where he impersonated mainly white characters, such as the Some Mothers Do 'Em character Frank Spencer.' His first television appearance on the New Faces talent show in 1975, age 16, was won with impersonations of Frank Spencer, Stevie Wonder, and others.

Robert Luff, his first manager, signed him in 1975 and gave him the opportunity to perform as a comedian on the Luff-produced touring stage version of The Black and White Minstrel Show. Lenny Henry told The Times in 2015 that he was contractually bound to perform and regretted his participation in the production, and that he regrets his family's absence from intervening.

Henry appeared in LWT's sitcom The Fosters, Britain's first comedy series starring mainly black actors in 1976. Henry has appeared on television shows including Celebrity Squares, Seaside Special, and The Ronnie Corbett Exhibition.

Henry Ball, who appeared with Cannon and Ball in 1980, made his debut in Blackpool during the Summer Season. Since returning from a crowd, he has said, "the summer season was the first time [he] felt that [his] act had received a proper response from an audience." He co-hosted Tiswas from 1978 to 1981, starring such characters as Rastafarian Razzmatazz, David Bellamy, and Trevor McDoughnut (a parody of Trevor McDonald), and then appeared and wrote for the show Three of a Kind.

He began working with alternative-comedy group The Comic Strip in 1980. Dawn French, a comedian, met his wife while volunteering with the group. She encouraged him to try out the burgeoning alternative comedy scene, where he began his career as a stand-up comedy performer and character comedian.

He created characters like Brixton pirate radio disc jockey DJ Delbert Wilkins, who mocked and celebrated African Caribbean culture. Kim Fuller's stand-up material, which sold well on LP, owed a lot to his writing abilities. During this period, he spent three years as a DJ on BBC Radio 1, performing soul and electro tracks, as well as introducing some of the characters that would later become well-known on television. In 1984, he appeared in the final episode of The Young Ones as The Postman.

In 1984, The Lenny Henry Show, the first series of The Lenny Henry Show, appeared on the BBC. The show featured stand-up, spoofs of Michael Jackson's Thriller film, as well as several of the characters he had created during Summer Season, including Theophilus P. Wildebeeste (based on Teddy Pendergrass) and Delbert Wilkins. Jon Canter, a principal scriptwriter on his television and stage shows in the 1990s, was a principal scriptwriter. In previous years, the Lenny Henry Exhibition appeared on periodic basis in new incarnations. He gave impressions of many well-known American celebrities, including Beyoncé, JAY Z, Tina Turner, Prince Michael Jackson (both men have a birthday date), Stevie Wonder, Run DMC, Cee Lo Green, Denzel Washington, and Wesley Snipes.

Henry co-founded the British Comic Relief charity group in 1985, and 1988, when the first ever Red Nose Day was commemorated. Over 150 celebrities and comedians, including Henry, were included in an evening long BBC show that was watched by 30 million viewers and raised over £15 million.

Henry lent his support to Red Wedge in a comedy tour run by the campaign ahead of the 1988 general election.

He appeared in a television film from Coast to Coast in 1987. With John Shea and two DJs with a common passion for Motown music being chased around the UK, it was a comedy thriller. The film has a loyal fan base, but contractual constraints have prevented it from being available on DVD or DVD.

Henry starred in the Hollywood film True Identity, in which his character pretended to be a white male (using make-up, prostheses, and a wig) to escape the crowd. The film was not commercially profitable. He appeared in Alive and Kicking, a BBC drama based on a true story, in 1991.

He appeared in the Christmas comedy Bernard and the Genie with Alan Cumming and Rowan Atkinson in 1991. Henry is best known as the choleric chef Gareth Blackstock from the 1990s television comedy series Chef!, or as the lead in the BBC drama Hope And Glory in 1999. He was co-creator with Neil Gaiman and producer of the BBC drama serial Neverwhere, 1996.

Henry appeared on Kate Bush's album The Red Shoes (1993) as a backing singer on the song "Why Should I Love You?" Prince On which Prince played guitar, he spoke. At Amnesty International's Big 3-0 fund raising concert, he also performed, backed by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Henry returned to the BBC to do Lenny Henry in Pieces, a character-based comedy sketch exhibition that was followed by The Lenny Henry Exhibition, in which he combined stand-up, character sketches, and song parodies, he was back to the BBC to do Lenny Henry in Pieces, a character-based comedy sketch show that was followed by The Lenny Henry Show. He appeared in the Harry Potter shows.

Henry was one of Britain's most popular acts in 2003. In March 2003, he was the voice of the British speaking clock in aid of Comic Relief.

Henry read the audiobook version of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, including Dre Head, the "shrunken head" on the Knight Bus in the 2004 Alfonso Cuarón film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. On the children's program, he also spoke about Sport, like Little Robots. Henry appeared in advertisements for butter products in New Zealand, which were now known as Fonterra, as well as the image of Saint Peter in the Virgin Mobile advertising campaign in South Africa. He promoted Alpen muesli in the United Kingdom, as Theophilus P. Wildebeeste, a mythical alcoholic beverage, was promoted.

With yachtsman Tony Bullimore, he sailed a trimaran from Plymouth to Antigua in June 2000 for a BBC documentary. In 2005, he appeared in Birmingham as an act for Jasper Carrott's Rock with Laughter. Bill Bailey, Jasper Carrott, Bonnie Tyler, Bobby Davro, and the Lord of the Dance Company were among the performers on stage. Henry appeared in Berry's Way on the BBC in 2006. In Kirby: Squeak Squad, he was the voice of Dark Nebula. Henry made a cameo appearance in a sketch with Catherine Tate, who appeared in the guise of her character Geordie Georgie from The Catherine Tate Exhibition, on March 16, 2007. The sketch was created for the BBC Red Nose Day fundraising campaign of 2007.

Lenny appeared with Chris Tarrant and Sally James in a 25th Anniversary episode of Tiswas on June 16, 2007. The 90 minutes featured celebrities and stars who had devoted themselves to Tiswas as children, as well as other children and those who had never been on the original program. On Tuesday nights, Lenny's Britain, a comedy documentary tour produced with the Open University, was shown in Lenny's Britain. He hosted a stand-up comedy tour of the United Kingdom in late 2007.

Henry's series lennyhenry.tv was broadcast on BBC One in early 2008. The program's companion website and broadcasts strange, bizarre, and generally amusing online videos and CCTV clips. He appeared on Rudy's Rare Records, a radio 4 show. On December 31, 2008 and January 2009, he appeared on Jools Holland's Hootenanny, a duoling and singer Duffy as part of the song Mercy. He appeared on the BBC's comedy show Live at The Apollo in January 2009, where he introduced Andy Parsons and Ed Byrne, who introduced Wikipedia as "Wrongopedia" for containing inaccurate information about his life.

Henry played Deakus in September 2009 in a comedy shorts about story writing with Nina Wadia, Tara Palmer Tomkinson, and Stephen K. Amos. In the writing tips video clip on BBC raw words – story writing, he also provides his own writing tips and amusing anecdotes. In the BBC CBeebies children's show Big & Small, he portrayed both Big and Small.

Henry produced and appeared in a five-part web series on BBC Comedy website Conversations with my Wife, about a fictional couple who chats over Skype when the wife is away on business, leaving the husband (played by Henry) to hold the fort at home.

He became Premier Inn's face in 2008, when he became the budget hotelier. One of the 2010 ads caused controversy and was barred from children's programming hours as it parodied a well-known scene from the film The Shining, with Lenny Henry ridiculing Jack Nicholson's appearance, slapping a door with an axe and then pointing his head through the door and then stating, "Here's Lenny."

On BBC One, Henry performed The Magicians, a Saturday night magic show. Henry was back in 2012 when he was first introduced, but Darren McMullen replaced him.

He appeared with Angela Rippon, Samantha Womack, and Reggie Yates in the BBC fundraising film for Comic Relief titled Famous, Wealth, and in the Slums, wherein the four celebrities were taken to Kibera, Kenya's biggest slum.

Henry was chastised for his opening sketch for the 2011 Comic Relief, during which he spoofed the film The King's Speech and became impatient with Colin Firth's portrayal of King George VI as he stammered over his speech. The British Stammering Association had branded the sketch as "a gross and disgusting gleefulness at pointing out someone else's misfortune," according to The Sun.

In 2014, Henry appeared in and produced a play based on Rudy's Rare Records, which appeared at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre before heading to London for the first time.

Danny and the Human Zoo, a ninety-minute television film that debuted on BBC One in 2015, was written by Henry. Destiny Ekaragha's script portrayed Henry's life as a child in the 1970s Dudley. Henry was portrayed by Samson Fearon, a Henry's own father Winston.

Henry will guest star in "Spyfall," the two-part premiere episode of Doctor Who's resurgent series, which will air on New Year's Day and 4 January 2020. Daniel Barton, a technology billionaire, appeared in Henry Barton.

Henry was announced as a cast member of Amazon Prime Video's The Rings of Power in December 2020. In 2022, it will premiere in the United States for the first time.

Henry appeared on the second series of The Masked Singer in 2021, masked as "The Blob." He came in sixth place in 6th place.

The Guardian published Black British culture topics, curated by Henry and Marcus Ryder for its Saturday Culture Issue No. 6.

Henry was cast in The Sandman in 2022 as the voice of Martin Tenbones, a mythical, doglike creature that appears in another character's fantasies, Barbie.

Henry wrote an open letter in March 2021 urging everybody to obtain COVID-19 vaccinations. People should, according to Henry, "trust the facts" and avoid misinformation. "We love you because we love you," Henry said, "We want you to be healthy, but we don't want you to be left out or left behind." Although some Black communities are rushing to obtain the vaccine and millions have already been vaccinated, some Black people in our community are being more cautious." The letter encourages black UK adults to make an informed decision about the vaccine and getting vaccinated in order to protect themselves and those they care for.

Music career

Henry was invited by Sky Arts to produce Lenny Henry's Got The Blues in 2015. He produced the album New Millennium Blues with a group of musicians, including Jakko Jakszyk, King Crimson's lead singer. Both covers of blues classics as well as original tracks co-written by Lenny are included on the album. Henry later debuted "hard-hitting animated blues video" directed by Iranian filmmaker Sam Chegini titled "The Cops Don't Know," which premiered by Classic Rock magazine on April 20, 2016.

Writing career

Henry has written four books, two autobiographies, and two young adult fantasies.

Who Am I, Again?

From the point where his first memoirs came to an end, he comes back to the surface. The ascension to fame was documented in this book. Henry's Tiswas began with his children's show Tiswas and continues with his Lenny Henry Show, which was on display for 20 years but not continuously.

Henry's two young adult books were written to complain that a lack of non-white characters in fantasy was detrimental to young adult non-white readers. The Boy With Wings tells the tale of a boy with wings and learns to fly. He and his allies must save the world. Bran and Fran, two black siblings who live with their mother in a tiny Midlands town, are included in the Book of Legends. When their mother goes missing, their search for her leads them to another world.

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