by Lenny Henry
‘There are universal things that bind us, and can’t we all just get along? Look, I eat the same food as you, watch the same TV, listen to the same music. I even talk like you. I don’t want any trouble. Please like me.’
That doesn’t always work out, but for a lot of us it did. It doesn’t mean bigotry and racism disappear as obstacles. Some people can’t help showing their true colours under pressure. But for those who want to be ignored so that they can live their life in peace in this country, the idea of smoothing out the things that make you different is often adopted as the way to go.
Mimicry was a pathway; it was integration writ large. People do impressions because it marks them out, and they become that interesting person. It’s a get-out-of-jail-free card for anybody who thinks they’re a bit dull in real life. And similarly, if you can do a Glaswegian or Bristolian accent, you’re the brown-skinned guy who ‘talks like me’.
One of the things that’s admired in the UK is being able to laugh at yourself. ‘You don’t want to have a chip on your shoulder, lad. You gotta be able to take a joke. If you can’t, you’ll never make it as a comic.’ That becomes a currency too. But there’s a danger: if you adopt the self-deprecating path, it has to be carefully negotiated so that you don’t end up in a depressing spiral of self-perceived worthlessness. And I’m not sure anybody wants to watch that unless it’s very skilfully handled, like Richard Pryor on racism, his difficult upbringing, his mother being a prostitute. Pryor’s mimetic skills, writing prowess and prodigious talent enabled him to make jokes about any- and everything. Not everyone can do that.
Who Am I #12
This photograph was taken in Felixstowe in 1977. I was mid-summer season with John Hanson and the lovely Peter Butterworth. I’m in baggy flares and radio station t-shirt (I have no memory of Radio Orwell, though it probably wasn’t run by a Big Brother-type boss, with a room 101 where they’d send you if you cursed on air), while the guy with the floppy hair and squinting eyes is Roger Fotheringill; he used to sing and dance in the chorus of the show and we became buddies that summer.
I look pretty happy – I’m fitting in – and everyone’s smiling for the camera. It’s all good. However, this relaxed feeling would soon vanish like steam off a hippo’s backside during a heatwave, as 1978 and Great Yarmouth with the Black and White Minstrels Show was just around the corner … sigh.
7
Growing Up Fast
PAPA’S PASSING AND NINE NIGHTS
My relationship with my papa, Winston Jervis Henry (b.1918), was odd, to say the least. From the moment we met in 1959, I perceived a coldness between us. He never said, ‘I love you,’ or even, ‘I like you.’ He was distant towards me; he never gave a hug and kept his counsel. At mealtimes, apart from ‘Stop the noise’, he hardly said anything.
Papa was brilliant at growing things. One year he began marking out areas in our patchy backyard at Douglas Road, which was all dirt and scrabbly gravel. He planted some seeds and left them, hardly watering anywhere at all. When spring came, suddenly there were cabbages and potatoes and carrots and onions and courgettes. It was amazing. We’d all forgotten that in Jamaica, he and Mama had been subsistence farmers, able to coax growth out of any type of land, anywhere. Mama would look out of the window: ‘Chuh! Him just a show-off …’ And Papa would stand in the middle of it all, looking pleased with himself. We had to give vegetables away that year.
Papa could be frightening to us kids, although Mama had forbidden him to lay a finger on us. Usually, the role of the Jamaican papa is to be the rod of correction, the ultimate threat, but Mama did all that. She was the disciplinarian, she was the one that beat us when we’d done something wrong. As I said earlier, Papa rarely lashed out or hit us, but he did hit me once. I was tormenting Sharon (the youngest), and she was crying and yelling. I felt this very sharp sting in my side and bent double – WHOOF! And when I looked at Papa he was reading the paper. He had lashed out so fast that I hadn’t even seen him do it. It was like getting a surreptitious beat-down from the Flash.
Papa would sometimes loom out of the shadows. One summer Bean’s Industries was on strike, so Papa was at home a lot. I was running in and out of the house, drinking from the cold tap and then disappearing to the park for long stretches of time. Once, after an entire day of this, I came home to have my tea. The lights were dimmed and I was making my way through the kitchen to the dining table, where my supper awaited me. As I reached the table, Papa appeared out of nowhere. Shocked, I hiccupped, and suddenly gallons of water burst forth from my mouth. It went on for a good ninety seconds. It was like someone had hooked me up to a spigot and turned it on full blast – whoooooosh! We’re talking gallons of water, everywhere. Papa just looked at me and said something like, ‘I hope yu don’t think is me cleaning that up?’
I spoke to Seymour and Hylton years later and asked if they’d ever had any moments with Papa that could be called intimate or personal. They thought for while, and then told me that once Papa started talking cricket, you couldn’t stop him. They also said that he liked to talk about the shape of a beer glass. Not really ‘intimate or personal’, but I now wish I’d been present at those conversations.
The last few days of Papa’s life stretched out into this hinterland of strangeness. He was suffering from renal failure, as well as dementia. This was a very difficult time for us as a family because before he was admitted into hospital, there had been shouting between him and Mama. Past relationship struggles suddenly snapped into focus and caused strife once more. Then Papa collapsed and was rushed into hospital, but he didn’t last long. I was very conflicted by this turn of events. Papa had never shown any real concern or love for me. Why was I so worried about him getting sick? He’d never said more than five words to me at any given time.
I went to see him in hospital, and the odd thing was, he wanted to talk. And for the last few days of his life he talked constantly about pretty much every aspect of his life: Jamaica, growing up there, working the land there, how he could make just about anything grow, including ganja, and how he would harvest and carry the contraband in several crocus bags all over the district, selling it in order to feed his family. As I sat and listened to him I wanted to scream, ‘Why didn’t you do this before? Why couldn’t we speak like this when I was growing up?’
But it was too late – within a few weeks he was dead.
In the lead-up to the funeral everyone was upset. Certainly, all the Jamaican-born Henry siblings were utterly distraught. Every one of them was crying – Seymour, Bev, Kay, Hylton – but me, Sharon and Paul were clueless as to why everyone was so upset. Mama wept copiously. How were we to survive on one wage packet? I didn’t cry during the entire time.
Before a funeral there is a ritual in Jamaican culture called Nine Nights. During this time, the bereaved must play host to the friends and family of the deceased for nine nights, supplying food, drink and space so that the guests can say their goodbyes properly, without feeling rushed. Papa’s Nine Nights began, and none of us Dudley-born Henrys knew what the hell was going on. Suddenly Caribbean people from all over the Black Country just started to appear at the front door:
‘God bless Winston.’
‘I worked with your father.’
‘I knew your husband.’
‘He was a good man.’
‘He owed me five pound and I want it back.’
‘I’m with him.’
The house was packed with these people for nine nights, all drinking, eating, singing hymns, wiggling their hips, crying, sobbing, wailing. It was a nightmare. When I asked my mama what was going on, who were these people, etc., she merely patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘This is just tradition.’
As the main rooms were filled with tearful or drunk guests, us Henry siblings found ourselves in the previously forbidden front room. This was a huge honour for us because indelibly printed on our cerebral cortexes were the words ‘Yu mus’ never enter the front room!’ We didn’t understand the big deal;
the room was the best-appointed space in the house, decorated with exotic flock wallpaper, leather(-ish) sofas adorned with hand-crocheted antimacassars, and lots of small paintings of Jesus – at the Last Supper, on the cross displaying his wounds … There were several framed texts on the wall. The one that scared me to death was:
Christ is the head of our house,
The unseen guest at every meal,
The silent listener to every conversation.
To me this meant that Jesus’s invisible head was floating around our house, lurking in the shadows, earwigging every conversation, like a kind of celestial CIA.
The front room had a massive drinks cabinet emblazoned with Japanese figures – geishas, samurai warriors, royal maidens. The radiogram was in there too, and this meant that my sister Kay could dominate proceedings with her taste in music. There’d be a bit of Aretha Franklin gospel, then when she thought the adults weren’t paying attention she’d bust out ‘Funk Funk’ by Cameo, ‘Serpentine Fire’ by Earth, Wind & Fire and ‘Got to Give It Up’ by Marvin Gaye. The front room would soon be full of young people dancing. Mama would appear at the door and glare at us – and suddenly the gospel album would be back on.
My father’s death did not hit me for many years after he’d passed. The sacrifices he’d made, the struggle against racism when he arrived in this country and the sheer slog of bringing home the bacon for years on end in a place that had been cold and uncharitable must have taken their toll.
The funeral ceremony – once it came – was long and drawn out. We had the service in the church and then the trip to the graveyard, where all the siblings took turns to shovel in the dirt. Once it was over, we all retired to a church hall and ate Jamaican food till we were full and drank till we were all drunk, and then I went back to work – I had things to do.
Shortly after that, Elvis died. He had a huge impact on me. Kay and I had watched all his films. I wanted to be him. All that stuff about him being a redneck emerged later. I always thought he looked like a decent chap, wiggling his hips and curling his lip all the while. How could he be a racist when his favourite music was black gospel? When he died at the age of forty-two, I was really upset. While I was growing up, Elvis’s pictures were on my wall: clad in prison garb but bustin’ moves in Jailhouse Rock, looking crazy handsome in King Creole. We had his records stuffed into the radiogram’s storage space. Most of them were coverless, they had been played so many times. We had singles – ‘Teddy Bear’, ‘Jailhouse Rock’, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ – and albums, but they were mostly cheap, knock-off versions, like I Got Lucky, which had a big shamrock on the front. We also had the GI Blues original soundtrack and the Christmas Album. I was a stone cold Elvis fan growing up; I had all the moves and had learnt songs like ‘Jailhouse Rock’, ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Hound Dog’ off by heart. Elvis was one of the main reasons I got into show business.
Papa didn’t give a monkey’s about Elvis. When I was ten, we were all excited because Elvis’s Comeback Special was going to be shown on BBC2. All the kids gathered round the TV and oohed and aahed at the King, all super-skinny in leather, grinning that devilish grin, making the girls in the crowd all crazy. My papa came in from work and said, ‘Turn over the TV – I want to watch the cricket,’ and that was that. No matter how much we bawled and complained and secretly muttered our hidden wish that Papa would suddenly be splidged by a falling piano, as the leader of the household what he said went, and we had to change channels to the boring-ass cricket. I hated him at that moment.
At the time of the funeral, I didn’t hate him, I just wished I’d loved him more. I didn’t cry, but I’m crying now as I write this because my papa raised me and put food on the table and clothes on my back. I owe him my tears. I grew up wearing a mask that said, ‘My papa doesn’t love me, I don’t care,’ but I had no idea of what he went through to raise me the way he did. I have memories of him and Mama arguing regularly about me – especially when I was younger, but I had no idea why. They’d come to blows sometimes, and either Kay or I would jump across the room to separate them, putting ourselves at risk. It didn’t matter what we did, within days, or even hours sometimes, they’d be back at each other’s throats.
DANNY AND THE HUMAN ZOO
In 2015 I dramatised these family tensions in Danny and the Human Zoo. I was working with my co-writer Jon Canter on creating Cradle to Rave, a music-based stage show that used elements of my life to tell the story of my love for music, whether it be rock, pop, soul or Kate Bush. Then I heard that Nicola Schindler and Caroline Hollick from Red Productions (famous for TV hits such as Scott & Bailey, Last Tango in Halifax and Happy Valley) wanted to talk to me about developing a TV series about my early life and my explosive introduction to the world of show business via New Faces.
Talks went on for a while, and soon the project had grown into a rite-of-passage story about a young black musician in Dudley and his chaotic Caribbean family. This iteration ran for a couple of years and the character of Danny grew into this loveable avatar that told stories from my life, but through music rather than comedy.
Then two things happened.
Firstly, the head of drama at the BBC, who would be the broadcaster for the project, wasn’t sure if it should be four one-hour episodes. Secondly, they weren’t quite sure that telling my story through the lens of music was actually what they really wanted. I’d given them liver and bacon, and what they wanted was jerk chicken and rice.
I sent a copy of the scripts to my friend, the legendary Neil Gaiman (Coraline, Neverwhere, Anansi Boys, American Gods). His notes, as always, were on the money:
Len, love Danny, love the family, love the Dudley stuff, but why isn’t he a comedy impressionist?
P.S. This feels like a ninety-minute movie, rather than four one hours.
Xx Neil. Love to family.
Damn him! He was right. The closer the new version got to the truth, the easier it was for me to write. I wasn’t having to make up scenarios and characters; I could riff on people I knew and the experiences I’d had and know that they would have the ring of truth. Perhaps the decision to avoid telling my own story so directly was driven by fear. In many respects I’m quite a private person and, apart from the odd mention in jokes, I tend to keep my family out of the glare of publicity.
However, Danny and the Human Zoo required a little more about my family, experiences, triumphs and failures than I had previously been prepared to write. The shift in focus from Danny the musician to Danny the impressionist/stand-up comedian gave me a sense of freedom. I could talk about things I knew about, albeit in a slightly refracted way. But there were things that had to be handled carefully, as with this memoir. My siblings were concerned that our parents’ story would be exposed to public scrutiny. They asked if that was what I wanted.
It was a tough time because I wanted to write something that, if not completely truthful, was at least my truth. But there was a feeling in the family that I should sidestep the elephant in the room and not talk about my origins at all. However, when the penultimate draft of the script was completed, I sent it off to Seymour, Hylton, Bev, Kay, Sharon and Paul for their perusal. The general consensus was that it was funny, heartfelt and moving, and that I should proceed. Kay, however, was disappointed and thought it didn’t go far enough. She believed there was an element of pussyfooting around the truth with the fictionalisation of the family and the attempt to ‘dress up’ my origins in an accessible-to-Middle-England way. I reassured her that I would do the best I could with the resources that we had.
In many ways, Danny and the Human Zoo is the precursor to this memoir. Once I had the taste of storytelling and life-mapping in my mouth, I had the feeling that there was more to say about being a young man growing up in the Black Country in the 1960s and early ’70s. The film was the first time I had been able to communicate to the world at large about who I truly was and where I came from. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t done so – the subsequent press attention was horrible and intrusiv
e. My brothers and sisters were harangued by local and national reporters, all vying for a scoop about my secret origins. I don’t know if I will ever quite recover from everyone knowing my business.
*
Now that I’m Big People myself, I’ve learnt that story ownership is the least of one’s problems. Big People have to sort out kids and lovers and wives and husbands and work and career and bills and house maintenance and relationships with their neighbours and Brexit and sexism and racism and homophobia, and deal with the fact that Coronation Street is getting its first black family almost sixty years after the series began. Big People have to deal with a lot; sometimes it’s good to let the kids run along and play and not worry about adult concerns.
Throughout every single family crisis, I grew like a weed, ate like a trencherman and played games of kick the can, hide-and-seek and wall-ball over in Buffery Park. There were beatings and chastisements, but there were also physical acts of love: hugs, pats on the head, laughter, smiles and mountains of food served up every day. There was no absence of love in our house; for the most part, it was unspoken, but we all felt safe within its walls. There was love; I just didn’t know what it looked, felt or smelt like at the time …
Once the secret of my origin had been revealed, the next few years featured a great deal of guilt and shame on my part. I thought the entire world already knew this big secret, one that I was the last to discover. Whenever I was up in Dudley, the embarrassment of clocking one’s birth father was palpable. Sometimes I’d see him when I was in the park with the Grazebrook Crew. They had no idea why I would suddenly clam up and try to shrink myself down as this black guy came towards me. Bertie had no fear of chatting to me whenever or wherever we met. He might amble out of some pub, see me across the street and yell at the top of his voice, ‘LEN!’ and I’d have to cross the road and say hello to him. He might give me some pocket money … in front of people. I would die. But I think he was only trying to make the best of a cataclysmically bad job.