Who Am I, Again

by Lenny Henry

  I don’t remember precisely what happened after that. I wasn’t reported to the lecturers or excluded. Life just went on, with Barry and I giving each other a wide berth, and things settled down.

  THE FIRST WORKING MEN’S CLUBS

  In the meantime, I was trying out new material in the evenings, with Greg, Mac and, sometimes, Tom in attendance. The guys would take me to the discos, but also to places like Bilston Steel Working Men’s Club – just to get a taste of what a grown-up entertainment venue was like. The club was overlooked by a massive, smoke-belching steelworks; the soot and grime from the chimneys settled everywhere, and all the cars in the car park were coated with a patina of black dust.

  When we entered the venue, we were the youngest people by a country mile. It was grim: post-war décor, patterned wallpaper, sticky brown carpet, beer-stained wooden bar, with wooden taps for the beer and ancient bags of pork scratchings, crisps and nuts pinned to the wall. The bar staff were all old and white; everyone chain-smoked. A constant stream of show tunes pootled out from the speakers as some ancient keyboardist played on a tiny stage, far away in the corner. He was to be my accompanist. I’d spent some money on an Elvis Presley songbook that had the chords for all his songs. I thought it might be a worthwhile investment. Turned out I was wrong. Most of the accompanists in the working men’s clubs could read a bit of music, but not particularly well. They could play the chords, but they never played what you wanted. They played what they could, and you just had to hang in there.

  So I handed the keyboard player my music. I was going to do some impressions, but I would also sing ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’ to ‘top and tail’ the set. There was some confusion: I’d been listening to these records my entire life, but what the man was playing did not resemble them in any way, shape or form. At many band rehearsals over the next few years I would find myself trying to explain how a record went, and the musician would nod and then play his version of what I’d just said, which would bear no resemblance to any music I’d ever heard before or since, leaving me to improvise around whatever they played.

  Bilston Steel was the first place where I felt a seed of doubt pushing its way firmly into my gut. The audience, all white, all middle-aged and older, didn’t appreciate what I was doing in the same way the younger audiences at the discos had. They laughed at Frank Spencer and Tommy Cooper, but they didn’t laugh at Muhammad Ali. It was the first time I’d been disappointed by my performance. It hadn’t been fun.

  So I went back and had another go, but this time on my own. I figured I’d better get used to going to these types of places, because this was the real world.

  I was living a dual existence. By day I attended West Bromwich Technical College and served my apprenticeship at British Federal Welders, and by night I performed in every discotheque that would allow me up on stage: Club Montesa, The Saracen’s Head, The Ship and Rainbow, The Fox and Goose, the Queen Mary Ballroom, Club Lafayette – anywhere with a stage and a curious DJ.

  THE CALL

  And then, just before Christmas 1974, I got the news. I’m not sure exactly how it was conveyed to me. It could have been a phone call, but then I don’t remember us having a phone (I might have bought our first phone several years later). It could have been sky-written by a light aircraft overhead, but I’m not sure who would have paid for that. Certainly not Mike Hollis, and definitely not ATV. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Mike gave me the news at the Queen Mary Ballroom: I was going to be on television in January 1975. The New Faces production team had called him, telling him that I had to get a decent three minutes together, wear proper showbiz-type clothes, with no swearing, and please be punctual. Light blue touchpaper and stand back.

  The show was to be pre-recorded on the Tuesday, so Mike and I went down to ATV’s studios in Birmingham on the Monday just to orient ourselves with the production team.

  When you go to a working TV studio, things happen all around you. That Monday, when we walked in for the stagger-through, I saw members of the Crossroads cast and was thrilled but also shocked at how people look behind the scenes. There’s Amy Turtle in rollers. There’s Sandy Richardson out of his wheelchair. There’s Meg Richardson – she’s like a flame-haired goddess in slingbacks. I got to run my hands over the reception desk of the Crossroads motel, until the security guy told me to ‘move along, lad, none of this is here for your entertainment’.

  I also got to walk on the set of The Golden Shot, where I met the show’s host, Bob Monkhouse, a brilliant comedian with the memory of an elephant. Monkhouse was a student of comedy who taped every comedy radio show and videoed the debut set of every comic working on television. He knew everyone’s act. When I met him again years later, he still knew every joke I’d used in my debut performance and recited them back to me. When I appeared on The Golden Shot, he stood by my side and helped me to improvise the whole thing on the spot.

  For some reason, ATV did not keep the tapes of the original series of New Faces, so all the debut performances of Jim Davidson, Victoria Wood, Showaddywaddy, Sweet Sensation, the Chuckle Brothers, Marti Caine, etc., had, to all intents and purposes, been lost. I’d been searching for my first appearance on the show for some time, but no one could locate a video, VHS or Beta. And then in 2016 one of the producers of New Faces, Paul Stewart Laing, called me and asked if I wanted to see my debut on the programme. I thought he might be teasing me. I told Paul that no one had a copy of that show, and he said, ‘Bob Monkhouse had a pristine video in his cellar.’ Monkhouse had taped the 1975 series of New Faces in its entirety and had kept the videos in a massive archive in his cellar. Paul invited me to a screening of that first show, and I was incredibly moved. My memory – fractured and blurred at best – snapped into focus the minute I sat next to Paul and they rolled the tape.

  THE REVEAL

  I’d chosen my show clothes with Mike’s help. Once again I’d gone to Austin Reed on Birdcage Walk in Dudley and had selected a beige checked jacket, a Viking-encrusted shirt with a big round collar, and some Oxford bags. My props – Frank Spencer hat and mac, etc. – had all been picked out and were ready to go. I’d worked and worked and worked on my routine until it was gleaming and I could do it in my sleep.

  The producers were great and offered lighting- and camera-based advice: ‘Maybe deliver this line here … This is your edge of frame … You don’t have to yell that particular bit because you’re right under the boom mic,’ etc. All handy stuff to know.

  I can’t remember exactly who was on New Faces that day, but I do recall there was a ventriloquist, a Tom Jones-style singer, a black female vocalist and a band of some sort. It was very exciting watching how they put the programme together. I’d assumed that television was something that just happened: the performers made up their lines on the spot. This was the day I found out that everything had a structure. Links had been written, a camera script had been produced, there was a beginning, middle and end to everything.

  John Pullen, an executive on the programme, came and spoke to me after my first rehearsal:

  ‘Well done, lad. Very funny!’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s John. I’m one of the producers.’

  I pulled a face that said, ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘I’m here to help. Look, instead of facing the cameras and the audience when you start doing Frank Spencer, why don’t you start with your back to the audience? That way you’ll have a reveal when you turn around.’

  I had no idea what a ‘reveal’ was, but I did as I was told. Mike thought it was a good idea. So, on the night, I changed my opening. I’d start with my back to the cameras and then turn around …

  Derek Hobson, a Northern Irish presenter, was the lynchpin of the show. He introduced me as ‘a Dudley lad aged sixteen …’ And then I was on, back to the audience, doing my Frank Spencer impression. The audience laughed a bit, not too much, though. I hadn’t done any gags yet … just babbling about the baby … And then
I turned round to face the cameras and the audience.

  And that’s when my life changed forever.

  The impact of starting with my back to the cameras became clear as I turned to face everyone – and the audience discovered I wasn’t just another impressionist. I was a young Afro-Caribbean, British-born lad from Dudley. I was black.

  And they hadn’t known.

  Mama’s h’integration thing had been drummed into me so well I’d almost forgotten it. But now, as I ran through my material, I was hyper-aware that something else was going on here. The material was fine. A lot of it was jokes we’d all heard before; some of it was me attempting to craft a narrative, a riff on cartoons, a riff on Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em. There were applause breaks, big laughs, and finally a huge round of applause at the end. The audience had really enjoyed it.

  Watching the performance all those years later, I saw in my youthful eyes the commitment to this new life. It took huge chutzpah to stand there, aged sixteen, and go, ‘Here I am, have this.’ I sat there in tears, watching that kid and thinking, ‘Where did that come from?’

  And then it was all over. Three minutes whizz by in performance. However, internally it’s slow slow slow as you pick and choose pace, inflection, meaning. During the set, everything should be calm. There shouldn’t be any panic, no rushing, because you’ve worked the material to such an extent that it’s just there at your fingertips.

  I think my reaction to the judges’ marks and comments was genuine. We’re so used to seeing the judges on X Factor and The Voice chatting away with the contestants that we forget that back in the day it was different. On New Faces the judges ruled, and they spoke about you as if you weren’t present. Tony Hatch and Mickie Most were renowned for their blunt appraisals. They made grown men and women cry with their comments. My appraisal on New Faces, luckily, was very positive. I got good marks and lovely comments from all the judges – and then suddenly I’d won.

  Now everyone knew who I was. But did I?

  Greg and Mac were in the audience that night. They congratulated me, and we went to Club Lafayette in Wolverhampton to celebrate. It was a brilliant night. I drank and danced and couldn’t stop. I was adrenalised. If this was showbiz, bring it on. I wanted more! I didn’t want this to end. I closed my eyes and jumped.

  Who Am I #6

  The white heat of New Faces. It’s the very first thing: me doing Michael Crawford’s Frank Spencer. Every time I see this picture, I’m reminded of that day at the ATV studios: my family and friends in the audience, sausage, egg and chips in the canteen, being backstage with all the other contestants. And then the host, Derek Hobson, announces my name, the lights come on, and I hit the stage. Three minutes of white noise. I was like one of those mums who, after a terrible car accident, the rear axle snapped in two, lifts the car single-handedly, rescues the kids, drags the car to a safe place and somehow manages to get to a public phone box to call the AA. And then afterwards, when they’re asked about what happened, they can’t remember. When I look at this photograph – and indeed when I rewatched my first three minutes on television – I see a kid wearing a mask of complete and utter focus. I don’t think I’ve concentrated so hard in my entire life. This was a sink or swim moment. I knew that, so I wasn’t fooling around. I was sixteen – where did that determination come from? It certainly didn’t hang around. There were many times afterwards when my focus wavered and my confidence snuck out of the back door, moments when I choked. But that didn’t happen here. (Shutterstock)

  The day after, I went back to West Brom Tech and didn’t tell anyone that I’d won. I thought I’d savour the feeling of being just another student, apprenticed to the British Federal Welders’ factory for just a few more days. The guys who knew I’d gone to Birmingham to make my TV debut were convinced I’d lost or embarrassed myself. I managed to conceal my delight for a whole week. And then transmission day came around.

  The whole family sat in front of the TV and watched the show. They all went nuts. As the performance unfolded, they kept looking at the TV and then back at me, as if the whole thing had been planned as an elaborate hoax. Mama was entranced by the show, incredibly moved and moist-eyed throughout. My papa didn’t say much, although he did pat me on the shoulder afterwards, grunting, ‘Mek sure yu keep yu feet on the ground,’ as he passed by on his way into the kitchen.

  Everyone was really happy for me, and then at the end of the show, once I’d been pronounced the winner, I did some weird stuff with my eyes and waved and mouthed, ‘Hello, Mama.’ That was it for me, I was destined for the big portion of meat for life: I had acknowledged Mama on TV in front of 16 million viewers. All that heartache, all that ‘h’integration’, the back-breaking hard work that she’d put into travelling to this country, setting up a home for the family, often doing several jobs to get enough money to feed us all – all of this had come to fruition.

  From that moment on, her attitude towards me changed, and it took some getting used to. People would say to her in the street, ‘I saw your Lenny on telly on Sat’day,’ and Mama would have to think who Lenny was, because Lenny was my ‘outside the house’ identity. I was like Clark Kent: at home I was Len (Kal-El), one of the many Jamaican people occupying that space; outside the house I was Lenny (Superman), behaving and speaking in a completely different way to how I did at home. Lenny was my public face, and now it’d been confirmed: this was going to be my life from now on. And I had no idea how difficult it would be.

  5

  Entering Showbiz

  THE SUMMER SHOW

  I was very naive in thinking that once I’d won New Faces, the work would just flow in, the BBC would bestow a TV series upon me, and ITV would knock on our door at teatime and just hurl money at us. I didn’t realise that this was only the beginning. New Faces had a winners’ final on which I had to perform, then there was a ‘viewers’ winners’ performance, so I had to prepare more material, more impressions. In my second performance I impersonated Al Jolson, using thick white tape to mimic his minstrel lips. Not the best of my ideas. I came second by one point to a very funny, really thin Liverpudlian comic called Al ‘I have to run around in the shower to get wet’ Dean. I was so angry with myself. Luckily, the viewers voted that I should come back and perform again – and this time I won.

  Then I was asked to be part of The Summer Show, a sketch show featuring acts from New Faces. It was a summer replacement show and would be made at Elstree, near London. The other members of the cast were singer Trevor Chance, comic Nicky Martyn, singer Charlie James (very tiny and seductive, slept in a matchbox), Victoria Wood (singer/songwriter/genius), Marti Caine (singer, comic, chain-smoker) and impressionist Aiden J. Harvey.

  Now I was in this new world where it was taken as a matter of trust that I could ‘come up with the goods’ each time. But the truth of the matter is, I was adrift from the minute I stopped trying out material in discotheques. This condition would last for quite a long time. However, there was this weird feeling of ‘Chap, y’can stop bustin’ a gut now, yow’m in showbiz!’ Now I was working with Dick Vosburgh and Bryan Blackburn, the writers on The Summer Show, who helped shape my material for each episode. Mike Hollis had suggested that for the New Faces final at the Palladium later that year, I should splash out and use Mike Yarwood’s key writer, Spike Mullins. The process of teaching myself about creating material, about performance, etc., abruptly went on hold.

  I said yes to everything and anything. I was having a ball. Now that I was famous, I got into all the discos for nothing and almost never had to buy a drink. I was ‘that black guy off the telly who did impressions’. I performed for free to all my new-found friends and went through a period of not seeing Greg, Mac and Tom very much. I had been seduced by fame. I hadn’t meant for this to occur; it had just happened while I wasn’t looking, and no one was telling me my behaviour was wrong.

  So I plunged headlong into The Summer Show. Vosburgh, Blackburn and the rest worked up material for us to do, and we all react
ed in the same way. The singers were cool because they just had to sing, but the comics were in uproar – the material wasn’t funny, topical or relevant. We had to work really hard to make ourselves believe that this material would work. The upside was that we all got to spend time together in a rehearsal room. It was fun. Suddenly I was working with adults who swore, drank, smoked and made inappropriate comments about everything. We had an extremely flamboyant director called Peter Harris, who tried his best, but we chattered and misbehaved so much that eventually he threw a chair at us.

  Because I was a kid, I was oblivious to whatever tensions there were during rehearsals. Leslie Crowther was the guest host on our first show. He was a juggernaut of British television, a comic, an actor, a singer, a sketch performer. He was incredibly impressive as a human being, very kind. I took to him immediately and followed him round like a puppy, asking him questions all the time. He was generous with his advice and taught me all kinds of things about timing, acting drunk and learning my lines. I realised that most of my elders were happy to be asked about the craft and would gladly take the time to tell me what I needed to know. I vowed from that day forth to be a sponge, to sit at the knees of my elders and betters and beg, borrow and steal words of wisdom about the profession. I needed to: the business was rough in the mid-1970s and my future path – the working men’s clubs, the big clubs, the summer seasons and so on – would prove a rocky testing ground. I needed all the help I could get.