by Lenny Henry
Once you sense what the funny bits might be, really practise – the more, the better. You want to be able to spit out jokes like Drake spits out lyrics. You need to have your jokes so polished and perfect that when you get up there and it’s you and the audience, you’re the funniest mate they have never met before. You and the audience are having a conversation in which you’re fooling around verbally or physically and they’re learning about you – how your mind works, how your body jerks.
The more gigs you do, the more you get used to the audience’s reaction. You’ll figure out what’s working and what isn’t; you’ll rewrite or rethink the bits that keep falling apart. Most times you’ll drop them completely. Just because something didn’t work doesn’t mean you’re not funny. You can seek advice from a co-writer or another comic who’s similar to you in style. You could say, ‘If you watch my act and give me notes, I’ll do the same for you.’ If someone starts writing good jokes for you, you might have to shell out at some point, so make sure you write down your agreement – it saves mess later.
I didn’t really do any writing. I was an impressionist who did jokes, so my routines were foraged from friends, television and strangers in pubs or taxis telling me gags. The first eight years was basically me taking advantage of the fact that my predominantly white audience had never seen a black impressionist before. They seemed to like what I did most of the time. When I died, though, it was pretty brutal.
Because my first onstage appearances were me ‘making it up as I went along’, I tried to be different at every gig. If I’d been booked for twenty minutes or half an hour and tried to incorporate improvisation into my usual set, it just didn’t work. The audience recognised the material that I’d done on television and liked it, but there was a real sense of ‘Why doesn’t the black kid from the telly have a proper act?’
Three of a Kind’s producer, Paul Jackson, suggested that I could collaborate with Kim Fuller (Not the Nine O’Clock News, Three of a Kind, Carrott’s Lib, The Tracey Ullman Show). I engaged Kim to come and watch me in cabaret a couple of times. He ascertained that I needed a stronger structure and better jokes, so we sat down and pieced together an act that was made up of characters, impressions and songs, all held together by bits of chat. That was it. We worked on it for a month and then debuted the new hour of material at a cabaret/restaurant venue in Luton. I remember getting big laughs – continuously. It was like a dream. Kim had brought a structure and a more disciplined approach to the amount of jokes per routine. I became very dependent on this relationship throughout the 1980s and for everything I did on TV. My earliest attempts at stand-up were all made with Kim helping me to figure out the path to success.
So a writing partner is good. However, much better is trying out material at a place where you trust the audience’s judgement. What I mean is, if you can find a venue where you get laughs, such that when you go to another venue you get similar laughs, then that is a relationship to cherish. Being a live act is about finding the best material and sticking to it for as long as you can. I know that seems a bit conservative – it’s fine to be constantly developing – but I loved Tommy Cooper, and he hardly ever changed his act.
There’s something to be said for really working your material until it shines like a jewel, so that you can do it in any condition – happy, sad, overweight, underweight, joyous, depressed as buggery. If you have an act you can do anytime, anywhere, anyhow … then that is a fine thing.
10. Bad Habits
On the good nights you can feel sensational – God-like almost. The audience are lovely, but they are not your friends and family. Don’t treat every gig and after-party like therapy. It’s alright to do your job and go home.
Don’t get into the habit of having people talk to you right up to the moment when your name is announced. Some people come into your dressing room before the show and want to hang out. This is great if you know the show and are confident, but if you have any fears about sequence, timing, patterning or whatever, then just before the show is usually a good time to make lists, practise or move around. If you’re doing a show where you don’t have a dressing room, go to the toilet, find an empty cubicle and sit for five minutes. Take your time, do some deep breathing … then come out, wash your face and get ready. You’ve got a show to do.
Back in 1975 at the London Palladium, in the hiatus between rehearsals and the live final of the New Faces winners’ show, I was literally ‘bricking it’ backstage in the dressing room. All my confidence had gone. I hated the jokes, the impressions, my clothes – everything. Mike Felix, a piano-playing, boogie-woogie comic, gave me some breathing exercises, and I straightened out and got through the show reasonably well. It’s good to find a moment of clarity just before you go on. Get your head in the game. Maybe do like Chris Rock before an important gig: watch Rocky – that’ll get you in the right space, if nothing else works …
11. Interactivity
I got into the habit of talking to the front row of the audience. It got so lengthy that in the end Ken Bowlly, my musical director, took to playing an AC/DC-style power chord on his guitar to signal ‘Time to move on, Len.’ Sometimes I’d be twenty-five minutes into the show. The fact is, I like talking to the audience. You can find nuggets of material you might not have discovered if you’d just gone on and done your act. However, if you have spent all that time shaping and honing and sharpening your material, do you really want to waste all that effort by deciding to ‘wing it’ for half an hour or so? Save the winging-it for the times when you’re compèring. I want to have a playful relationship with the audience, but I also want to give them a show when the time comes.
If you’re going to get people up out of the audience, it is important that the audience member agrees to be your stooge. A quick word before they get up will do. You have to sort of guide them through the experience of being on stage with you. There are some bits where you hardly need to say anything at all, but a general rule of thumb is that you should canvass opinion about ‘who wants to be in the show’ before the lights go down, or just ask before you do the bit if someone would mind helping you out.
We’ve all seen shows where the member of the public was really funny and fitted in with everything the performer wanted, but sometimes they can freak out, and then you’ve got a problem on your hands. Be really careful. As Spider Man says: with great power comes great responsibility.
12. Television
When I went on television my attitude was, ‘This is all or nothing.’ I poured all my energy into coming up with the best three minutes I could think of. I was sixteen.
These days young comedians are much more aware of their material, of what works and what doesn’t. They tend to know what routine is going to represent them in the best possible way. When a scout has seen you and reports back to their boss, they will usually show a clip from the Internet or wherever you showcase your best work. The boss will then expect something resembling your best work on their TV show. However, if the producers want you to do something similar to what they first saw, they might ask you to ‘re-record’ one of your best bits. It’s doable. I was at BBC Lime Grove sound recording studios once and Lenny Kravitz was there. The BBC said he couldn’t mime to the original track of one of his own songs on Top of the Pops; he had to record a new track especially. Kravitz didn’t moan or yell; he just got his synth, drum machine and guitar and remade the track in a couple of hours. It was brilliant. The point is, you should be able to re-present your party piece or even replicate it at the drop of a hat, if necessary.
If they come and see you live, they’re going to want your best routine for the TV. If you don’t mind retiring that particular bit, fine; but if you don’t want to give it up just yet, you might have to negotiate something else – your opening routine or your pivotal thirty-mins-in routine. Apparently, Jay Leno has a hilarious bit about his dad trying to get the video machine to work, and he’s never done it on TV. So protect your jewels until you’re ready to let ’em go, a
nd then – BAM! – do ’em on telly and get all that lovely praise and kudos.
13. The Big Break
My big break, arguably, was performing at the Queen Mary Ballroom in 1974 in front of Mike Hollis. He then wrote to New Faces and Opportunity Knocks, and the ripple effect brought me to where I am today.
Nowadays people get their break on the Internet … and before you know it, they’ve got 3 million followers. There’s also the long road: working open mics, then getting booked a few nights a week, then a couple of shows a night, then getting it together to put on a show at the Edinburgh Festival, then a four- or five-star review, then a transfer to London, and then – BOOM! – someone from 8 Out of 10 Cats or Russell Howard’s Good News spots you and they want you to come and play …
The path was different back in the day. I knew that I wanted a TV show like Dave Allen’s or Mike Yarwood’s. Nowadays, the TV bigwigs shun the sketch show and there are no variety shows where a comedian can come on and rock for five minutes.
Although the comic-centred sketch show has gone the way of all things, there are other ways to skin a cat. Your big break may not come from a stellar appearance on a mainstream variety show like Britain’s Got Talent, but you may get a break by being brilliant at Edinburgh or serially successful in all the pubs in your neighbourhood. Maybe a clip goes viral or you get the gig as the over-excitable weatherman on a local radio show. There are many paths to the promised land. You just have to set a goal, aim for it and … JUMP!
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to Lisa.
Elyse Dodgson’s family for the permission to use excerpts from Motherland.
Gerry Anderson and everyone at Supermarionation: your creativity inspired me as a child, when I would watch Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Fireball XL5.
Lew Grade stuff.
Man from U.N.C.L.E.-type stuff.
Top of the Pops.
Radio 1.
Blazing Saddles.
Superfly.
Shaft.
Norman Beaton.
Rudolph Walker.
Charlie Williams.
No Problem!
David Copperfield, Tracey Ullman and Paul Jackson.
Tarrant and the Tiswas posse.
Robert Luff.
Sidney Poitier.
Woody Strode.
The Wire.
The Sopranos.
Oz.
Breaking Bad.
Royal Holloway College.
Goldsmiths College.
The British Library.
The BFI.
Billie.
My mama.
My siblings.
Spike Lee.
Ava DuVernay.
Ryan Coogler.
Barry Jenkins.
Amma Asante.
Steve McQueen.
Meera Syal.
Sanjeev Bhaskar.
Gurinder Chadha.
Michaela Coel.
Marcus Ryder.
Pat Younge.
Angela Ferreira.
David Harewood.
Adrian Lester.
Richard Pryor.
Whoopi Goldberg.
Steve Martin.
Robin Williams.
Dudley.
Greg.
Mac.
Tom.
Mr Brookes.
Vanessa Pereira.
Sue Hunter.
Kirstie McLeod.
Richard Curtis.
Kevin Cahill.
Peter Bennett-Jones.
The McIntyre organisation.
Robin Nash.
Louis Prima.
Earth, Wind & Fire.
Cameo.
Parliament-Funkadelic.
Soul II Soul.
Mica Paris.
Bob Marley and the Wailers.
UB40.
The Average White Band.
Martyn Symonds.
The Lockshen Gang.
Lucy Robinson.
Ed Bye.
I’ve worked with some fabulous writers. Here’s a few of them (but thanks to everyone who’s ever put pen to paper with/for me):
Kim Fuller.
Tony Sarchet.
James Hendrie.
Geoff Atkinson.
Jon Canter.
Universal Grinding Wheel (Eamon, James and Martin).
Stan Hey.
Peter Tilbury.
Danny Robins.
Crucial Films posse.
Douglas Road posse.
Emily Rees Jones.
Rebecca Ptaszynski.
About the Author
Lenny Henry has been a comedian since the age of sixteen. He has risen from being a cult star on children’s television to one of Britain’s best-known and most celebrated comedians, as well as a writer, radio DJ, TV presenter, co-founder of Comic Relief and an award-winning actor. Henry has a PhD in Media Arts, and in 2015 was awarded a knighthood for services to charity and drama. In 2018, BBC One aired The Lenny Henry Birthday Show to celebrate his career so far.
Copyright
First published in 2019
by Faber & Faber Ltd
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This ebook edition first published in 2019
All rights reserved
© Lenny Henry, 2019
Cover design by Faber
Design by Faber
Front cover photo © ITV / Rex / Shutterstock
Back cover images: school photograph, courtesy of the author;
with his mother Winnie © Mirrorpix / Getty; still from New Faces, 1975 © Central TV, courtesy of the author; Showtime ’84 programme, courtesy of the author; Britannia Pier, 1981 © Archant courtesy of Simon Cherry
Author photo © Jack Lawson
The right of Lenny Henry to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Graphic novel sequences written by Lenny Henry, illustrated by Mark Buckingham and lettered by Todd Klein. We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:
Excerpt from ‘Codicil’ from The Poetry of Derek Walcott, 1948–2013 by Derek Walcott, selected by Glyn Maxwell, published by Faber & Faber, copyright © 2014 by Derek Walcott. Reproduced with permission from the publisher and Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Extracts from Motherland by Elyse Dodgson, Heinemann, 1984, pp. 5, 17. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Business; Extracts from The Oxford Companion to Black British History by David Dabydeen, Oxford University Press, copyright © 2007. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear; Lyrics from ‘Sweet Jamaica’ written by Aldwin Roberts, performed by Lord Lebby, The Jamaican Calypsonians, copyright © 1955. Reproduced by kind permission of Kernal Roberts and family; and an extract from The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis, copyright © C.S. Lewis Pte Ltd, 1940. Repro-duced with permission.
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ISBN 978–0–571–34262–4