Who Am I, Again

by Lenny Henry

  PAUL

  Paul was a great kid growing up. He couldn’t sit still or concentrate. The teachers at his school said he couldn’t focus and didn’t hold out much hope … maybe he just needed to be doing something that he wanted to do. He was mischievous, cheeky and funny. Always very funny.

  He followed me everywhere. I remember he followed me to school one winter’s day and got knocked down by a car on Blackacre Road. He broke his leg and was in a cast for weeks. I felt terribly guilty about that. I think I was doing that ‘Leave me alone, what are you following me for?’ thing. And suddenly – BAM!

  He would follow me and my pals Greg and Mac down to this knackered adventure playground we used to frequent. It had blackberries and rhubarb growing wild everywhere. The roundabout was unreliable, and the swings had frayed ropes. The place was a liability, but Paul and my nephew, Glen, would follow us down there, and while we played football with a tiny tennis ball, they screwed around on the see-saw and acted stupid on the swings, spinning them round and round and round at speed until they whizzed off like dervishes.

  Paul loved this game, and stood nearby as a white boy named Gaz Butcher played havoc with the swings. Now, I’m gonna give Gaz some credit and say that he didn’t mean to let the swing go with all its weight towards Paul in the way that it did. It was an accident. The swing seat whooshed towards Paul’s unsuspecting face – WHAM! – hitting him in the mouth, and although no teeth were lost, he was badly cut around the lips. There was some laughter; it might have been nervous, but there was laughter all the same.

  I was really pissed off. I felt that no one was looking out for me and my family. Was this racism? I didn’t know. I just walked my little brother home, and although he’d been badly cut, he didn’t moan about it or blame anyone or point the finger once. He said he’d been in an accident and had come home ‘with Len’ because he wanted to rest.

  Later on, when he was in his early teens, Paul became a bit of a ragamuffin, hanging out in the park, playing cards, smoking, doing all sorts. He was on Mama’s mind a lot, wearing out her nerves. But Paul was relentless. Whatever Mama did or said, he just kept on misbehaving and getting into trouble at school. No one thought to check him for ADHD or whatever; he was just assumed to be ‘not that bright’ and was allowed to go missing without too much fuss. It was a shame. I knew Paul to be as smart as paint, a quick-witted boy with a sharp sense of humour. He knew his music too, and he could dance. In the early days of hip hop he was in a dance troupe called Spectrum and could be found busting B-boy moves in rehearsal rooms, as well as on stage at the local disco. Spectrum were featured in a TV show called SWANK on Channel 4 in its early days.

  In the meantime, Paul’s highly developed sense of humour – and, for that matter, my sister Sharon’s – came to my aid at various times. They watched everything I did on TV and made comments when they saw me:

  ‘That wasn’t very good, chap. You had no energy.’

  ‘Who wrote that rubbish? You were a bit joke-light.’

  ‘I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve to come round here after what you did on Seaside Special last night.’

  And so on. They were ruthless but nearly always right. Whenever I thought I’d just about got away with something substandard, Paul and Sharon would appear and teach me that I had, in fact, not got away with it, and for an hour or so they would show me, with diagrams and re-enactments, why a particular routine hadn’t worked.

  My proudest moment involved Paul. In the 1990s I was curating a writers’ retreat called A Step Forward. My production company, Crucial Films, had managed to squeeze some money from the BBC in order to host a three-day writers’ workshop for black, Asian and minority ethnic (working-class) writers. We had read dozens of scripts and managed to narrow the applicants down to thirty or so. I then invited people such as the BBC’s Head of Light Entertainment, James Moir, producers John Lloyd and Charlie Hanson, and writers Richard Curtis, Anne Caulfield and James Hendrie to come down and give lectures on writing sketch comedy, show films, hold one-on-one sessions and judge a writing competition. Paul had written some sketches for our perusal and had been chosen for inclusion.

  We had six groups, and each one had to write a number of sketches and then swap work with another group and be judged. We had asked some comedy actors to come down and perform some of the sketches. We would find out who’d written what later.

  A sketch about John Barnes – about him being such a good football player that he not only dominated defence but also midfield and front-field; that he was able to get off with girls during play, cook gourmet food and build an extension to very high standards – was hilarious. Victor Romero Evans (of No Problem fame) performed the John Barnes super-fan with a Jamaican accent and a sense of high dudgeon. We all laughed so much; every single development of the premise got bigger and better laughs. There was an explosion of appreciative applause.

  The writer’s name was announced: Paul Bevan Henry. I almost burst with pride. My baby brother had proved that he could sit down, write and create something worthwhile; it just had to be something that he really wanted to do. He went on to write on The Real McCoy and The Lenny Henry Show (1984–8, produced and directed by Geoff Posner). As a writer, Paul is such good fun in the room. He can make you laugh tears of joy at a funeral. I’ve seen him do it – he’s that funny.

  He can cook ‘big food’ too, churning out plate after plate of proper Caribbean food, like dumplin’, rice and chicken, cookdown beef, ackee and salt fish, and every ting as well. I’m deeply jealous of this. As someone who had to use someone else’s hands for the chopping sequences in Chef!, it pains me to say my brother Paul can do all that stuff standing on his head.

  We should see each other more than we do. I intend to fix that …

  SHARON

  Sharon was visiting Mama’s old village in Clarendon, and an ancient lady wrapped in several layers despite the heat, head covered with a scarlet cloth, carrying a gnarled stick, looked at Sharon and told her she ‘mus’ be Winnie Henry child’ because ‘yu have her frame’.

  Sharon’s the baby of the family, and she was adorable from the off. She was pretty much Paul’s female junior sidekick. They were always mentioned as a pair – Eric and Ernie, Cannon and Ball, Sharon and Paul.

  Sharon is real smart, and makes friends easily. After Papa died and she grew into her teens, I became more of a father figure in some respects to both her and Paul, which was weird considering Seymour and Hylton were older than me. I guess this was because after winning New Faces in 1975 I’d become the de facto breadwinner. But I didn’t mind; in fact, I loved it. Even when I came home one day to find them playing frisbee with my albums, hurling them through the air at assorted wildlife in Buffery Park: the Ohio Players (whizz, smash), Miles Davis (whizz, smash), This Is Soul: A Stax Compilation (whizz, smash), Peters and Lee (actually I didn’t mind that one being frisbeed).

  Sharon was on the back of the bike when I hit a bump in the road and went flying over the handlebars. She’d have been about six, and apart from shock she was fine, but I managed to slide along the road’s gravelly surface on my face for several yards, removing the top layer of skin on the right-hand side. Until my skin grew back, after three months or so, I looked like the Jordan Peele alternate casting for Two-Face in the African American version of Batman. But Sharon was fine.

  I don’t remember her being in any trouble at school, and I don’t think she ever got into trouble at home. It was sickening. There was us getting ’nuff bitch licks day and night, and there was Sharon deftly sidestepping it all with a butter-wouldn’t-melt smile on her face.

  Sharon is bloody funny too, quick-witted, sharp – she’s got the jerk-saucy banter. She and Paul are still a double act to this day, and when they get together they can make me laugh like a drain, almost at the flick of switch. Not necessarily jokes per se, although one-liners do abound; it’s usually more a mash-up of Dudley-speak, Jamaican sayings, imitations of family and hugely overinflated opinions (
add alcohol to this and it can get crazy like a mofo). Sharon has her own theatrical management business. She actually looks after people in the business. Actors, writers, things like that. She’s amazing. I’m so proud of her. Why the hell won’t she represent me?

  SEYMOUR

  In 2018 Seymour and I went to Jamaica to make The Commonwealth Kid, a BBC documentary about post-colonial Jamaica and the surrounding areas. We visited where he grew up and where Mama and Papa used to work. It’s a place called Concord, in the Claremont district, near Bensonton, in St Ann Parish.

  We drove to where my elder brothers and sisters went to school. They used to run there every day, carrying a piece of breadfruit or yam and, if they were lucky, a piece of chicken. When they arrived, a grown-up would relieve them of their burden and promise to cook it in time for lunch. If they were even a minute late, they got one or two lashes with the cane. Jamaican school don’t play.

  There are photos of Seymour hanging out near Grandma’s house. He’s smoking a roll-up and there are several young people – some with dreadlocks, some with tight curls in lines – sitting with him and smoking too. In all the pictures Seymour looks calm, assured and relaxed. And that’s as it should be. Whenever I’ve spoken about him on stage or television, the person I describe is always tall, lean, handsome and militant, the kind of guy who doesn’t take shit from anybody, but doesn’t bang on about it either.

  Seymour was born in Jamaica, and he was the last of the siblings to come to the UK. Apparently, he didn’t speak until he was four. When I asked him why, his reply was classic Seymour: ‘There wasn’t anything to say.’ Mama said that once he started talking, he wouldn’t bloody stop. Apparently, he was a Professor of Naughtiness: he had a PhD in Mischief, and wreaked havoc throughout St Ann Parish. He was always fighting and sometimes he’d be beaten badly by kids from a rival town. Shortly before she passed away, Mama told me that she had to get on a donkey, ride to a nearby village and yell at the top of her voice, to anybody that could hear, ‘Anybody in dis raatid hole place wan’ mess wi’ my son should know that when they do that, they’re messin’ wi’ me as well.’ When she saw that no one from the village was about to challenge her, she would spur the donkey with her heels and ride out of town like John Wayne in an apron.

  Seymour had to take his fair share of licks growing up, but he revealed to me during the filming of The Commonwealth Kid that when he arrived in England to find three-year-old me, it was as if all his Christmases had come at once – something which he’d never said to me before. I was blown away by that.

  Truth be told, he and I pretty much always got on. He was a legend in our house. Mama had ruled over us all with an iron fist and the threat of multiple whacks with a broomstick/iron cord/shoe heel/clenched fist. However, for Seymour, it all stopped when he caught Mama’s fist mid-punch and just held it there, until she backed down and told him to get out. Seymour left immediately and joined the RAF, vowing never to return. But Mama was there on his passing out day, weeping with pride as he marched past in his dress blues.

  Seymour was a very good son, and wherever he was stationed, he would come home bearing gifts from that location – vases, rugs, sculpted heads, cups, saucers. Mama loved everything and made a big fuss of him whenever her prodigal son strolled in from abroad.

  Because Seymour lived with us for a while, his bedroom was there for us to explore whenever he wasn’t home. As a kid I loved going into his room. There was all sorts there: weird ‘educational’ magazines under the bed, heavy boots and a sizeable collection of vinyl that had to be seen to be believed, with lots of Stax and Atlantic – Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Aretha Franklin, Booker T. and the M.G.’s – and plenty of reggae. It was a cornucopia of musical delight, and whenever I could I’d sneak in there, borrow an album, then creep into the front room (verboten to pickneys) and play said record quietly, experimenting with dance moves while trying not to break the special china.

  Seymour caught me in his room a couple of times, which is why I have two army boot-shaped dents in my skull. He could throw a boot with unerring accuracy could Seymour. He was a Jamaican ninja.

  When Seymour left the RAF, he did a variety of things – fixing TVs, electronics, early computers, all sorts. I grew closer to him when I made my first foray into show business and moved down to London. When I lived in Wembley, Seymour was in Harlesden. I found myself spending more time with him and learning a great deal about him and my family. It was a more equal relationship than it had been before. We’d go clubbing to Gulliver’s in Mayfair, drink and eat together. Seymour came to gigs and hung out, and he always had an opinion about the show. In many ways I think he was disappointed when I disappeared down the Black and White Minstrels rabbit hole: ‘You? Performin’ in a minstrel show? I mean, what the forkin’ hell yu do that for?’ We tend not to talk about it these days.

  My experience with him on The Commonwealth Kid brought us even closer together. Standing on the site where your parents lived years and years ago, or indeed looking at the graves of three deceased siblings, are events that can bring anyone closer together. I also felt an absence, having never experienced Jamaica in the same way as my elder siblings.

  Seymour used to drive a bus in London, and one of the things I’m proudest of is that on the day of the 7/7 bombings in 2005, he ferried frightened and injured passengers away from the chaos to safety. He doesn’t talk about this much, but even to this day you can tell the whole experience had an effect on him.

  Seymour is always a disruptive presence during our sibling soirées. He’s usually there with a glass of brandy, his flat cap and his rapidly disappearing teeth, talking about home and his memories of how things used to be. I was most moved by him at Hylton’s funeral, when I realised just how close they had been. Seymour began the eulogy and was so upset he stopped and couldn’t finish. There was a pause, he looked down at his feet and tears dripped from his eyes. Then it was as if all the sibs watching had the same idea simultaneously: we all walked purposefully towards the stage and hugged him until he was able to finish his speech.

  Seymour has three children – Prima, Stuart and Simone – and he also has grandchildren. I tease him endlessly about this, because he doesn’t behave like a granddad.

  BEV

  Beverly Parker is my eldest sister. She came over to the UK from Jamaica in November 1960 (when I was two), and soon after married Charles Parker from Laws Hill, Concord district, Jamaica. They quickly produced three boys. Charles went to work in a factory, while Bev mostly stayed at home and took care of the house and the kids.

  By this point we had moved from Victoria Terrace to Douglas Road. The house was at the end of a long terrace, two storeys high, with a barely perceptible hairline crack down its front aspect. It was built on top of a septic tank that would burst its seams each rainy season, leaving us to wade through an entire street’s waste, until the local water board came and fixed whatever was wrong.

  The house had a medium-sized kitchen, a front room (as mentioned earlier, Jamaican rules clearly state that children are NOT ALLOWED, UNDER PAIN OF DEATH, to go in the front room), a back room and a living room. There was a shared toilet and bathroom on the upstairs landing. The décor was typical Mama: lots of flock wallpaper, lino, bits of carpet (bought with bingo money), pictures of Jesus and an eclectic collection of second-hand furniture. We had a lilac tree in the front yard, and Papa had a vegetable patch near where Mama used to park the car. There was an alleyway to the left of the building that led to the back entrances of the neighbouring houses.

  I remember the house being packed with Henrys and Parkers just about getting along. Bev’s three boys – Trevor, Mike and Kenneth – were all born in the early 1960s, and so were very close to me in age. We all slept in the same bed, four similar-sized kids sharing the space. It wasn’t great. We took it in turns to wet the bed. There were many times when I dreamt I was asleep in a submarine that had just been torpedoed. Tough times.

  Bev was a pivotal f
igure in my life because Mama was at work all the time. She’d leave the house before 7 a.m. most mornings, leaving Bev in charge for the rest of the day. Bev had her own children to deal with, so to a large extent she would lay off us younger siblings. She was a cooler, non-violent version of Mama. As long as we did what was asked, we were allowed to go about our business without fear of being hit with a Dutch pot upside the head. Bev used to calm Mama down, stop her acting rashly. A good influence.

  Bev and her family eventually moved out – too much conflict and overcrowding. I was sad to see her go, though I was glad to get the bedroom to myself. I could put pictures on the wall. I didn’t have to divide up the chest of drawers and the wardrobe any more. I could put my books down without fear of them being torn up or thrown away by a malevolent nephew.

  Bev and Charles now lived a ten-minute walk from us, in rented accommodation nearer to Dudley town centre. I missed Bev’s calming presence, though, especially after one particularly alarming experience. I was nine years old or thereabouts. Somehow, the sap was rising, and I was very interested in the opposite sex. I was captivated by the photographs of naked women doing the ironing (from Health & Efficiency magazine) that we found over in the park. Why were they doing the ironing naked? Why were the whole family naked as they ate their breakfast? Why were these torn-out pictures of semi-clad females abandoned in the bushes? It was a Pandora’s box of questions.

  I liked reading too, and when Seymour left two large crates of paperbacks in the cellar, I was over the moon. I would creep downstairs into the murky, dusty world of the Henry cellar, where there were old record players; overstuffed, dead armchairs; bits of abandoned timber with long, lethal, rusty nails sticking out; old clothes and shoes; and the odd bit of costume jewellery. I loved being down there, and during the holidays when everyone was out of the house at work or play, I would sneak in and have a good old root round.