Who Am I, Again

by Lenny Henry

  I would sometimes show up and have to wear a yarmulke and sit through prayers in Hebrew, before eating lockshen soup, matzoh bread and a roast chicken dinner. I loved it all. Their families were very amenable and kind. The more I experienced other people’s families, the more I began to understand just how unusual mine was. The Lockshen Gang’s families were mostly middle class, both parents usually working, educated and living in a relatively large house on a reasonably quiet and affluent street. The grown-ups would include the kids in their conversations; in our family, children were bystanders to whatever the grown-ups were saying or doing.

  The Lockshen Gang’s parents were incredibly generous – whatever you could eat was yours. I’m sure that is the reason I packed on the pounds during my first two years in show business. I was eating all the time. I’d go to Neil’s house, and his mum would say, ‘Lenny, have you eaten? Sit, you look starved.’ And suddenly I’d be knee deep in matzoh balls – delish!

  We talked a lot too, much more than when I was back in Dudley. The gang were my age and they talked about politics, parenting, friendship, sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll, TV, movies, theatre … It was exhausting. I was usually the only black guy in the group – or one of two when Joe was there – but I was used to that. I was always treated with respect and love, never ridiculed or rebuffed because I was black. My experience in London was made bearable by my association with the Lockshen posse.

  I needed the support too, because this was the year – 1975 – in which I was to embark upon an interminable club tour with the Black and White Minstrels. In the absence of my Dudley friends and family, the Lockshens became my default family. They came to shows, gave me notes and supported me throughout the whole experience.

  Who Am I #8

  This is a scene from The Fosters in 1976, the first-ever all-black sitcom to be made in the UK. Norman Beaton is on my right; Rudolph Walker of Love Thy Neighbour fame is on my left. This feels like a century ago. Norman and I look like we’re in some bizarre multi-generational boy band, while Rudolph looks like he fell in a wardrobe, had a fight, and lost.

  This was my first-ever acting job, and thank God I got to work with people like Norman and Rudolph. Norman had had huge experience working on stage: he’d been in a calypso band; he’d worked in theatre all over the UK. Rudolph had done loads of telly. I’d been on a talent show for approximately twelve minutes of screen time. Who I am here is ‘No-Experience Len’. I’m watching Rudolph like a hawk in case I learn something …

  6

  Minstrelsy

  REFLECTION: ON RACE

  Before we get to the Black and White Minstrels, I want to talk a bit about racism. I saw something in the newspaper recently. It was an article about a gentleman in Devon who’d been arrested because they found explosive devices in his living quarters, plus a diary where he named all the people he hated and wanted to kill, two of whom were my ex-wife, Dawn French, and me. It immediately made me think of a thousand points of dark light, moments when I’d felt shame and embarrassment and rawness because of the colour of my skin.

  When I was a kid, I lived next door to a kid called Steven, who was my age and white. He had everything, all the toys you could possibly think of: every single Thunderbird, a Stingray, a Johnny Seven (a silver-painted space rifle, complete with water pistol, red projectiles and glowing lights), a Man from U.N.C.L.E. briefcase, a Batman outfit with utility belt, and endless Hot Wheels cars and Dinky toys. Steven was an only child and his parents spared no expense in trying to keep him amused. I’d played with him several times and we got on very well.

  One day, something changed. Because we lived so close, Steven would always pop across, knock on the door and ask through the letterbox if I was playing. I would rush to the door, open it, and we’d be off like rockets. But for a few days leading up to this incident, Steven didn’t come round. Eventually, I popped over, knocked on his door, opened the letterbox and shouted, ‘Steven, you playin’?’ There was a silence, and then I saw him approaching the door. He put his lips level with my eyes and then spat and told me not to come round again. I was very young and didn’t understand what had changed. Although he didn’t say anything racist, it felt as though he’d received some piece of information about who we were and what his behaviour should be when dealing with people like me. It broke my heart. But I carried on with my life, minus Steven.

  At Blue Coat secondary modern, there was a massive tectonic shift regarding race, because there were many more people who looked like me. So having been at Jesson’s junior school, where I was one of three black kids in the entire student body, I switched to St John’s primary and then Blue Coat, where there were many more black and Asian kids. Suddenly, I was having to defend myself not only against white kids, but also against people who looked like me! Talk about a rock and a hard place. This was crazy.

  Racism in the park was different. Skinner Williams, a boot-boy type, was always with a gang, and whenever he saw me he took great pleasure in calling me names and insisting that I smelt ‘like all nig-nogs do’. He was bigger than me and mobbed up, so I never got the chance to retaliate. I just stood there and took it. Of course, my brother Seymour had the answer: ‘Listen, don’t let these forkin’ eediats get yu down. ’Ear what? I tell yu what yu do. Next time one of these bumba clarts calls yu wog or coon or nig-nog, yu pick up a brick and lick them inna dem neck back.’ Although this sounded like a sensible course of action at the time (I was nine), I would eventually eschew this advice. Seymour was on a different journey to me. I was in my h’integration phase. Half killing some kid with a brick would not endear me to polite society.

  One Jamaican kid, Mickey Wright, recently arrived from the Caribbean, chased me around Buffery Park with a cricket bat, yelling, ‘White man! Yu is a white man!’ because he’d heard a Dudley accent when I spoke, and because he’d seen me talking to white kids. He saw this as a betrayal and wanted to beat me to a pulp with the bat. Somehow my fear gave speed to my legs and I ran all the way from the sheds in the park to my front gate, pursued by this kid all the way, and managed to beat him home. For some reason, he didn’t walk through the gate, smash down the front door and stalk me through the house. The front door was magic. No non-Henrys allowed, unless invited.

  I remember somebody saying to me, in the lead-up to New Faces, ‘When I say the word “nig-nog”, I don’t mean you. You’re one of us. I mean them other nig-nogs.’ I think I just nodded dumbly. Why would somebody say this? Like I was going to reply, ‘When I say racist arsehole, I don’t mean you. You’re like us. I mean the other racist arseholes.’ Ignorance is extraordinary.

  Perhaps one of the by-products of the H’Integration Project as originated by my mother was that I was denied teeth, having been told to fit in by any means necessary. As a child, fitting in, to my mind, meant: ‘Don’t rise to any kind of abuse. Ignore it, just get on with it.’ Nowadays, I’ll speak out against racism and abuse, but I’ll do my damnedest not to be drawn into a fist fight.

  Sometimes it’s difficult to know when people are using racism against you. It could be a slip of the tongue. It could be some act of exclusion. During my time in the Black and White Minstrels I was subjected to little acts of racism almost every day.

  In the early days of my marriage to Dawn, a red-top printed a picture of my house on its front page, and as a result the National Front smeared the letters ‘NF’ on my front door in excrement. They also stuffed burning rags through the letterbox. One guy handwrote messages on tiny squares of paper threatening violence to me and my wife, the pen almost breaking through to the other side he was so angry. He was furious that we were a racially mixed couple and was prepared to do anything to damage our relationship. But we ignored this kind of thing. We knew that there was only a small group of people that had a beef with us regarding our relationship, and we simply chose to ignore them.

  However, I do wish I had stood up to racism more. I wonder if turning one’s back is really the answer. A lot of my favourite people h
ave refused to allow racism to pollute their lives, and in this age of uncertainty – when Windrush-era immigrants are being detained in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre because they don’t possess documentation for every single year of their presence in the UK, or when the residents of Grenfell tower march and march and march in order to draw attention to their predicament, or when anyone who has experienced brutality at the hands of the police during a stop-and-search has been brave enough to talk about it to the media – perhaps it’s time to stand up and be counted as far as racism is concerned. Maybe we don’t walk away any more. Maybe we stand our ground. As Victoria Wood used to say, ‘Whatever they say, just say something back.’

  Although I’m rarely on the receiving end of overt racism these days, this might be my way forward. The activists’ way. Not seeking out a fight, because I’m shit at fighting. But having lived through riots and insults and people touching my hair on the bus and telling me it’s like Velcro, people spitting on their fingers, rubbing my face and saying, ‘Ooh look, it doesn’t come off,’ maybe this is the time to stand up and tell people to back off. Now where does a guy find a half-brick round here?

  Who Am I #9

  This is a picture of me in my front room in Douglas Road, when a photographer had come to my house post-New Faces. I’m definitely wearing a mask here: it’s blackface.

  As the photographer said himself: ‘A lovely shot of Lenny Henry when appearing in the Black and White Minstrel Show. Although he never painted his face for the show, he did this at my request for a publicity shot – it paid off and made the front page.’ (The Black Country Album: 50 Years of Events, People and Places, Graham Gough, 2012)

  DON MACLEAN

  In 1975 I went to the Exhibition Centre on Broad Street in Birmingham. Robert Luff had suggested that I go and meet Don Maclean, who was in residency at the time. Don was a stalwart of children’s TV – he was a presenter on the BBC’s Crackerjack! – and he was also the compère and resident comedian on the TV version of The Black and White Minstrel Show. He would resume his Minstrel Show compèring duties in 1976 at the Blackpool Opera House.

  Don was doing two performances a day at the Exhibition Centre. He was working with Jan Hunt, a vivacious comedy performer and singer. They did a double act to begin the show:

  Jan: ‘What’s good for women’s rights?’

  Don: ‘Men’s lefts!’

  Jan would do a very professional solo set, and then Don would do his comedy act to finish. He was absolute dynamite. This was the first time I’d seen a proper professional comic up close and personal. Here I was able to watch how Don worked the room. He was like radar, slowly taking in every single angle, smiling continually and dropping joke bombs like they were going out of style. He had a Jerry Lewis-like appeal to me – lanky, goofy, silly, gurning. He did whatever it took to get the joke over the line. It was a big performance. Don had a powerful singing and speaking voice and an effortless delivery. From the minute I saw him I knew that I had to be more like him and less like me. This was the mimic in me hard at work. ‘Whatever you do, Len, don’t be yourself – that’s not good enough. You’ve got to be like him.’

  This was the beginning of an obsession for me: how could I get to a place where I was slaying the crowd every night? I made it my business to watch Don perform several times that week, and what I noticed was his consistency. His show was predictable, in that he always got the laughs to come where they were supposed to be. Every. Single. Time. It was amazing to watch. He would stalk the stage like a velociraptor, marking out his territory and spraying jokes out to each point of the compass. He’d walk on stage and just hammer us with jokes, and it built and built and built till he got to the climax. The final sequence of patter would reduce the audience to tears of laughter.

  When I did the Exhibition Centre shortly after, I was embarrassingly inadequate. I did everything I’d done in my New Faces performances, but it was very disorganised. I had my props and my table and my music, but it was very amateurish. I was lost. I used to have one of those laughing bags from a joke shop. You pressed a button and maniacal laughter would issue forth from the bag. I took that on stage with me and pushed the button every time there was an absence of laughter. I pushed it a lot during my residency.

  Who Am I #10

  This is me and Don in about 1976. I don’t know where we are. It looks like Blackpool. Don did a very good job with me, as a mentor. He took me under his wing and taught me the basic tenets of showbiz etiquette: always press your suit before you go on; no need to wash your shirt after a first house, but good idea to hang it over a radiator; don’t shout into the microphone, it’s already making your voice louder; make a point of addressing the right and left sides of the audience and look up sometimes – those bastards have paid good money to see the show.

  Don welcomed me into his family at a time when my own family were physically distant and couldn’t help me even if they wanted to. This was a transition period of sorts. The New Faces experience was becoming just a memory. I was moving into Minstrel territory now and I needed a spiritual guide of sorts. Don took the helm like a champ and dragged me, kicking and screaming, into the realm of professional performance.

  Don was married to the lovely Toni, with two kids, Rory and Rachel. They made me feel as though I was part of the family, and understood innately what problems I might be going through at this stage. I don’t think the whole Black and White Minstrels thing had sunk in yet, which is why I look like I’m having such a good time. My relationship with Don would be a springboard to the next phase of my career. I owe him a lot. I hero-worshipped him and copied everything he did performance-wise in a strange, obsessive way for the longest time. Later, this obsession would get me into trouble.

  THE CLUB TOUR 1975–6

  The Minstrels’ club tour at the end of 1975 was a massive opportunity for me to learn, and despite all the attendant ethical and moral issues surrounding my involvement, I took it. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for until, at the press call, I was positioned between two blacked-up dancers, given a sparkly hat and told to pretend that ‘I was a minstrel too’. It finally sank in: this was going to be tough.

  The tour proceeded from just before Christmas and into 1976, as we ground our way through Jollees in Stoke, Batley Variety Club, Caesar’s Palace, Luton, and the Showboat Theatre in Cardiff. There were more, but my memory has blotted them out. Beforehand there was an extensive rehearsal period with a full orchestra. I had my music written out by a lovely guy called Colin Campbell, who lived in the Midlands. He wrote out a complete set of ‘dots’ for me – intro to Dave Allen, intro to Kojak, intro to Frank Spencer, etc., plus stings for each ending.

  Don Maclean had sat down with me and gone through my twelve-minute first-half spot. He was brutal. Nothing was good enough and he made me work over and over again on timing, delivery and content. I practised continually, and when the time came I gave it my best shot and (in my mind anyway) managed to get away with it. I was on really early in the show – the second spot in part one – so I had time to watch the other performers. The Minstrel boys were all capable of singing and dancing simultaneously, but they were never required to. All their numbers had been professionally recorded and arranged in London. There were two sets of Grundig tape machines running continually throughout the show, and the tapes contained lead and backing vocals, plus live-sounding ‘taps’ for when Les Want, one of the main performers, did his American Songbook/Fred Astaire-style routine.

  In my experience, the tape only malfunctioned once – at Blackpool during summer season in 1976. The Minstrels were up there, ‘singing’ and dancing their hearts out, perfect, multilayered Brian Wilson-style harmonies, and then – SNAP! – the tape broke and we were left with the half-mumbled moans and groans of people who’d never expected to be singing live. The audience’s reaction was a mixture of shock, awe and revulsion. I pissed myself laughing.

  Backstage I got on really well with the guys and girls. The boys
were mostly slightly older than me, some of them straight, quite a few of them gay. I’d never encountered this many gay men before, but everyone’s gung-ho good-naturedness meant I was able to overcome my provincial naivety. They were fun off stage and looked after me when I needed it. I was ignorant about such matters, but eventually I was to learn that as long as you minded your beeswax and were sensitive, then you were cool.

  Our first date on the tour was at Caesar’s Palace, Luton, a massive nightclub that held over a thousand people. The show had sold out weeks before, and the place was packed out for seven nights. I’ve never seen a show in a club like it before or since. The Minstrels rolled with a full theatre crew, lighting, sound, sets and stage management. There was a twenty-piece orchestra in the pit, plus ten boys, ten girls, four principals, two comics and two speciality acts. The show was drilled to perfection; even I felt a responsibility to do my best and deliver the goods. I had managed to string together, with Don’s help, a decent twelve-minute set. I used music to link the whole thing and at one point utilised special effects: strobe lighting in order to imitate Steve Austin, the six-million-dollar man. During all of this, I felt very much at the mercy of each audience I faced: if they liked me, then I’d have a good show; if they took a dislike to me, then I’d have a shit one. It never occurred to me that it was always within my gift to make it a positive or negative experience. It’s never the audience; it’s always you.