Feature - Upfront
Lenny Henry
by Matt Nippert
Stand-up comic Lenny Henry has been a British television fixture for 35 years, but his first professional gig as a comedian was with now-infamous blackface variety stage show and series The Black and White Minstrel Show. Oddly enough, in True Identity, his first big movie role, he wore whiteface for half the film. Lampooned on Extras and playing the “shrunken head” in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Henry – who turns 50 next month – is wrapping up his epic international tour in New Zealand.
You’re married to Dawn French. Is life in a two-comic household as hilarious as it sounds? Maybe it’s best that people have that idea and I don’t say anything. If you leave your pants on the floor, you get bollocked. Ego gets checked at the door and people have to accept their responsibilities. It’s normal, our house. It’d get tedious if it was jokes all the time.
It’s been two years on the road for you. Are you looking forward to the end? The final, the last leg, the very last leg, is in New Zealand. I’m really looking forward to it. I love New Zealand, it’s great. The wife said, “Oh, can we retire to New Zealand?” I said, “I don’t know.”
Better than dying in Cornwall, I guess. You cheeky bastard. I play favourites here, young man.
A character you play in your show, Daniel Lister, is a paratrooper who served in Iraq. How funny is war? When you talk to soldiers it’s very funny, because they say things like, “Well, of course I’m not political”, and “We don’t talk about politics”, but they’re the sword arm of the government – they are political. I thought that was an irony. And they’re very wry and dry. They have their own food chain of jokes and a very peculiar and particular sense of humour. And so Daniel has got that dry, laid-back approach: “Yeah, friendly fire. It’s not very friendly if you ask me.”
Can comedians speak truth to power more easily than politicians? It’s like the jester in King Lear – the closer you get to power, the cheekier you can be. Comedians can break things down for people much better than political analysts can. I remember watching Spitting Image, and because of that show everybody in Britain knew who the Cabinet was. Before they started to satirise those guys, nobody knew who they were. Comedy’s good at breaking things down. I’m talking barricades, intellectual puzzles. If you’ve got someone poking fun at it, suddenly it all becomes much smaller and more accessible.
You’re one of the most high-profile mature students. Why did you wait until your 40s to go back to uni? We’re in a knowledge-rich society at the moment, and if you can increase your skills then you can increase your value. I wanted to have a better understanding of English so I did a BA in English and graduated last year. I’m doing an MA in screenwriting now and we’ll see how that goes.
What good books have you read recently? I like Tim Winton – he’s an incredibly lyrical writer, a beautiful writer. I like Anne Tyler, and I know that sounds weird because she wrote The Accidental Tourist and that can be seen as a girly book, but I think she has a wonderful, simple prose style that lends itself to screenwriting. If you want to be a screenwriter, her descriptive passages are like haiku. And all the old stuff – Madame Bovar by Gustave Flaubert, Germinal by Emile Zola – is fantastic.
You front a band – Poor White Trash and the Little Big Horns – that sounds like the ultimate comedy supergroup. Why did Adrian Edmondson leave? He wanted to play heavy metal and R&B, and every soundcheck would be us playing Soul Man and him playing Smoke on the Water. It just wasn’t going to work, so Adrian left. He now wants to play horns for us but we’ve said no. Hugh Laurie plays keyboards and he’s very good. He plays boogie-woogie and does one-finger solos, but it’s rare we get together now because of House. He refuses to come from LA to play at a Student Union in Brighton.
Laurie sold out? Can’t say I blame him.
Henry is on SATURDAY MORNING WITH KIM HILL, RNZ National, Saturday, 8.10am.
LENNY HENRY: WHERE YOU FROM? tours to Christchurch, New Plymouth, Auckland and Wellington between July 25 and 31.
