Lenny Henry

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So how funny is our sense of humour?
After hearing jokes across Britain, Lenny Henry's verdict offers little cheer
Amelia Hill, social affairs correspondent
Sunday June 10, 2007
The Observer

From The Office to Little Britain and Peep Show, British comedy is as robust as it has ever been. But are Cockneys really funnier than Scousers? What about the Welsh? The British take their humour seriously, but do the one-liners people tell really reveal something about society, about who people are and how people have changed? What, in short, is in a joke? To get under the skin of the British sense of humour, the Open University has carried out a unique survey of the jokes people tell.

'The defining trait of Britishness is our sense of humour, but although we all tell funny stories and jokes, not all of us get a laugh from them,' said Dr Marie Gillespie, professor of sociology and anthropology at the Open University. 'Jokes are not just a bit of fun. Yes, they play with the taboo and the forbidden, with the rules of language and logic, but jokes are also a barometer of the social and political climate. They reveal a great deal about social conventions and expose established pieties.'

As part of an ongoing survey by the OU into jokes and their relationship with society, Gillespie has spent six months analysing the jokes of over 420 people as told over the past year to a travelling 'joke booth' in such unlikely outposts as the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent and the Metrocentre, Gateshead. Gillespie's research has been used as the basis for a four-part television series hosted by Lenny Henry. Lenny's Britain tracks his experiences as he tours Britain with the joke booth, visiting family homes and workplaces to find out what humour means to people in different environments.

It was not all, Henry admits, good, clean fun. 'I have to admit, I was really shocked by the jokes a lot of people told; most of the time, I might as well have been back in Seventies Britain,' he said. 'The humour was predominantly racist, homophobic, mother-in-law and cannibal-fixated. The one characteristic most of the jokes shared was that they were mean. They were joyless. I have been left wondering if that is what we've all become as a nation: mean and hateful.

'The most upsetting thing about this is that humour is the best way of spreading love and binding us all together,' he added. 'But instead I found that in some environments, such as offices, humour was used to isolate others as a form of bullying.' Henry remembers watching as a joke at the expense of a colleague was emailed around an office he was visiting, eventually arriving on the screen of that person. 'I talked to my daughter about this sort of thing, and she confirmed that this is how humour is used when computers are involved,' he said. 'It was a profoundly depressing discovery.'

Gillespie, however, advises caution in being offended by other people's humour. 'We have to be careful not to speculate about the intentions, racist or otherwise, of joke tellers, and it's important to distinguish between a joke and the uses of that joke,' she said. 'A joke can easily be turned into an insult, but it needn't be meant that way, or taken that way.' Perhaps the most unexpected finding was that not a single joke about class was told by the 212 men and 208 women who entered the booth in locations all round the UK and Ireland. 'I found that amazing,' said Gillespie.

Professor Christie Davies, author of Jokes and their Relation to Society and The Mirth of Nations, who also worked on the study, said: 'Many jokes had a religious theme, featuring vicars, priests and nuns who swear or drink or are associated with sauciness or sex.'

So can the British congratulate themselves on their culturally superior sense of humour? Henry thinks not. 'It seems like everyone is telling the same joke, revealing the increasingly pervasive influence of TV, emails and texting.' 'Our humour has melded and bulged into that of the rest of the world,' he said. 'It's a tragic shame: where the original British sense of humour still exists, it is absolutely unmistakeable. It is sharp, ironic and powerful. But I fear it is being lost. And if we lose our sense of humour, it makes me incredibly sad to think what other unique aspects of our cultural identity go with it.'

The way we tell 'em

Some gags collected by the OU 'joke booth'.

Glasgow
What was Humpty Dumpty wearing when he fell? A shellsuit.

Newcastle
Why does a cow moo? Because its horns don't work.

What did the submarine say to the ship? I can see your bottom.

London
What's brown and runs round the garden? A fence.

Dublin
What do you call an Alien with no eyes? Alen.

Exeter
What is ET short for? Because he's got little legs.

Swansea
A woman poisoned herself last week eating a daffodil bulb. The doctors say she will be all right and will be out in the spring.

· Lenny's Britain, BBC1, 9pm, Tuesday (on Monday in Scotland)

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Might be worth a watch

[SpursFan1902]

I simply adore him!

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Lenny Henry casts frown at comedy of humiliation
The Courier-Mail
By Sally Browne
July 13, 2008 12:00am

IT'S not very fashionable these days, says Lenny Henry, but he wants people to laugh at his shows, not squirm uncomfortably. The legendary British funnyman says we're in the era of "humiliation and embarrassment comedy". From TV fare such as The Office and Extras to films such as There's Something About Mary, it seems we're laughing at protagonists' misfortunes, rather than with them.

But Henry, who has been making people laugh since the 1970s, just wants everybody to have a good time. Call him old-fashioned. His wife, comedian Dawn French, does. "I like comedy that says, 'I'm glad to be alive'," he says. "And I like teasing people, having a laugh, you know. It might be old-fashioned, but it's who I am really. I want to be excited, I think. Going to see a good comedian should be like going to see Prince or something. It should take you on a journey. You want the comedic example of a guitar solo and doing the splits and wearing a pair of trousers where the buttocks have been cut out and replaced with lace. That's what I'm talking about."

Ahead of his arrival in Australia, Henry, 49, is chatting on the phone from his office, not far from his home, which he shares with French, of Vicar of Dibley fame, and their daughter Billie, 16. He's surrounded by snapshots of his "missus", and on the noticeboard are depictions of Othello, the Shakespeare character he will be playing in an upcoming British production, along with research and quotes. There's also a picture of Degas' dancers and a still from the movie Stardust, sent by comics writer and author Neil Gaiman, on whose book the film is based. They're good mates and Henry is a huge comics fan.

There are many sides to Mr Henry, 188cm tall, booming-voiced and a household name in Britain. He recently completed a TV series Lenny's Britain, in which he toured the country, throwing himself into all manner of professions, from fireman to "designated birth partner" at an underwater childbirth. His new show Where You From?, currently touring Australia, takes in such anecdotes as well as a roll call of his favourite characters, such as Mr Lister, the grumpy shopkeeper, Rachel, his sexy but religious wife, and Reverend Carmichael, the trendy white vicar.

"What I like about those characters is I hope they're universal people. Everybody knows a shopkeeper. Everybody knows a woman who's pissed off with her husband." In his own relationship – he and French have been married since 1984 – comedy has been a great communication tool. "One of the reasons we like each other is because we're quite funny. We relate to each other really well, slightly taking the mick out of each other or being ironic. Humour plays a big part in our relationship, I think."

Henry, who is often linked to the alternative comedy scene of the 1980s, which tried to break the mould of racist and sexist jokes, says, overall, comedy has changed for the better over the years.

"Now you get more comedians in their early 20s and they're funny because they're not just telling the old jokes, they're expressing themselves in a funny way. Audiences are now more used to comedians being stream-of-consciousness, lyrical and poetic. They're talking about their childhood. It's more psychoanalytical, I guess."

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Forsoof.

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No, seriously
Simon Hattenstone
The Guardian,
7 February 2009

Lenny Henry says he knows just how Othello must have felt. At school, there were only three black kids in the whole place. "There'd be a fight everyday over words. Coon, wog, nigger, OK, bang! I'm on the floor with this guy. I can't really fight, but I'm having to because he called me that." He smacks his fist against his hand in anger, the memory still raw. "Then, when I did the clubs, there might be one other black person in the room, and at the working men's clubs I'd definitely be the only black person there. So the play resonates with me because wherever I've been for a lot of my career, I was pretty much the only black guy. When Roderigo says, 'What a full fortune does the thick lips owe, If he can carry't thus', that's him calling Othello the worst name you can think to call somebody."

Henry has just finished morning rehearsals at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. The director, Barry Rutter, has been telling him to be more militaristic: "Stress the monosyllables, more staccato." Henry looks as if he's loving the experience, but it's also clear he's got a huge amount to absorb. This is the first time he's acted on stage, and he's playing Othello - he could not have jumped in at a deeper end.

Henry's wearing a yellow T-shirt, spectacles and a dense beard. The beard is black with flecks of grey, his belly is big, and at long last he's looking less boyish. I ask if he's nervous. "There could not be any more shitting of self than there is going on at the moment." He is working for the company wage, £439 a week, and says his fellow cast members have been incredibly generous. "I'm the new boy, and they all know me as the bloke on the telly. What's been great is there's been a lot of respect flying around - you know, I like you in the Premier Inn advert."

Occasionally, he sounds like a character in the squirm-inducing comedy Extras - a former premier league celeb now playing in the championship. Henry unwittingly starred in Extras in a typically ruthless Ricky Gervais vignette: Gervais's character is asked by Keith Chegwin to name a good black British comedian, and he says he can't. The camera pans to the wall behind them and a poster of Henry. Recent years have not been kind to Henry's reputation: while he remains one of the most popular men in showbusiness, his work is often derided. Sometimes by himself.

Henry has been in the public eye for 33 years. He was 17 when he made his television debut on the talent show New Faces, doing impressions of white staples such as Frank "Oooh Betty" Spencer and David "Gwapple me gwape nuts" Bellamy. Before long, he had created his own black characters - sex god soul singer Theophilus P Wildebeeste (Have you got any African in you? Would you like some?), Brixton wideboy Delbert Wilkins and Guinness-supping nostalgic Grandpa Deakus. Henry was given his own show, and enjoyed great success, but he had his critics - some said his characters reinforced stereotypes, others that he simply wasn't funny enough. He was compared with one of his own heroes - the great Richard Prior - just because they were both black. But whereas Prior was edgy and uncomfortable, Henry was safe family entertainment.

Soon after winning New Faces in 1976, Henry was offered a job on the touring Black And White Minstrel Show as a stand-up comic doing a 10-minute stint to break up the routines. Now derided as racist (white actors blacked up as southern minstrels), back then it seemed merely dated. As for Henry, he found the set-up weird - why would they make up white folk, rather than simply employ black people to play the parts.

It wasn't until he joined the cast of the TV comedy The Fosters that Henry realised many people found the minstrels offensive. "I was working with Norman Beaton, Carmen Munro, hanging around with Mustafa Matura, some of the most militant black people you could ever wish to meet, and they all said, "What the fuck are you doing in The Black And White Minstrel Show?"

Who was the most militant? "Norman. He made me read and shit, so I had to read all these books about Malcolm X. He was always saying, 'You've got to know about this stuff; you're in the show and you've signed a contract, but you'll get out of it soon so read these things and make sure you understand why its wrong, and make sure you understand you're a political football. Make sure you understand about your history and where you're from and who you are." He was brilliant."

How did he feel about the Minstrels? "Terrible. I had a fantasy of playing James Brown, Say It Loud: I'm Black And I'm Proud, on the tape, but I never did." In 1979, he quit. By then he had a regular spot on the anarchic Saturday morning children's show Tiswas, which provides my fondest memories of Henry: just a few years older than me, more boy than man, he ate condensed milk sandwiches, said OK in a ridiculously exaggerated rasta way, wore hyperbolic hats, and was daft and likeable rather than a regular comic.

He was 20, and a household name. He says his father, a strong, taciturn man who worked in a foundry, was proud of him, not so much because of the work he was doing, but because he could afford to buy a colour TV and a car and take him out for a drink. "It was amazing. We were poor. Very poor. We lived in a house with a hairline crack down the middle of it and a sewer that used to burst every summer and we'd be waist deep in our own crap." He pauses. "Some would say, some of the television shows I've done, things haven't changed." He's funniest when laughing at himself, yet there is also something defensive about it - as if he wants to get the jibes in first. His father died when Lenny was 19, leaving him with just the one piece of advice - keep your feet on the ground, son.

It was Henry's mother who was, and remains, his biggest influence. She had come over from Jamaica, already the mother of four, and set up home in Dudley, West Midlands. Lenny was the first of three born in the UK. Winifred Henry was even stronger than her husband. "She had a right arm like Popeye". In Jamaica, she had preached in front of crowds - singing, shouting, getting up the spirit. Winifred was a funny, terrifying woman, a brutal disciplinarian, Henry says, and he couldn't have loved her more. "Mum would hit us with anything. You'd see her looking for something to hit you with, and you'd think, please let it be something reasonably soft. She threw a chair at me once. It was like being in a western."

At home he was reserved, polite and spoke in patois. He saved his humour for his white friends at school. Winifred told him he shouldn't speak patois if he wanted to make anything of himself. "You've got to talk like they do if you want to fit in." She had wanted him to study, but at 16 he left school just after starting an HND in engineering to pursue his career in comedy.

Perhaps Winifred's desire for him to fit in partly explains the nature of Henry's comedy - unthreatening, accessible to all. He went on to appear in the sketch show Three Of A Kind with Tracey Ullman and David Copperfield, and a number of his own shows. "There was a point when I was doing lots of things, and not all of them were great ... you know, the flirtation with the Saturday night thing. Lenny Henry.TV [in which he introduced internet funnies], Lenny Goes To Town [a more traditional Saturday night show with famous guests]. Some things I look at and wish I hadn't done. But better that than that I've never worked."

In the late 70s he met his future wife, the comedian Dawn French. She had worked as a teacher, was from a very middle-class family and was friendly with a group of clever comedians who had a highly developed sense of irony and self-worth. Henry got to know the new "alternative" comedians such as Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson and Alexei Sayle, worked with them, but never truly became one of them. His background was, and remained, the cabaret circuit, and he still had more in common with working-class gagsmiths such as Charlie Williams and Jim Davidson than with the likes of Stephen Fry.

"I was always uncool. I was always from variety - big bow ties, flared trousers. Never cool." So who was? "Well, Rik and Ade and Alexei, they were cool. And we were the variety people. And quite right, too." He felt the lack of coolness even more intensely when the thriving black comedy scene in America was mentioned. "I never asked to be compared to Richard Prior." He stops, and starts again. "I just realised he was one of the greatest humorists we'd ever had on earth, I knew I wanted to be like that. I didn't want to have a heart attack or drug problem or set myself on fire like him, but I wanted to aspire to that sort of artistry on stage. But I was still the guy from Dudley who was not cool and who had been in The Black And White Minstrel Show, and so anything I achieved was seen as a bonus."

He quickly turns back out of Regrets Avenue. "I'm sort of glad I wasn't cool, because coolness seems to last for a very short time and then they start dissing you". Since the 1990s, he has focused more on acting, in the comedy Chef (as the arrogant anti-hero of the title) or, increasingly, serious dramas such as Hope And Glory, in which he played a head trying to turn round a failing school.

Has he been trying to break free of the comedy straitjacket? "I think - Dawn's always saying this too - sketch comedy in particular is a young person's game." Within the same breath, he's having second thoughts. "Then again, Dick Emery and Eric and Ernie did it. But the media are skewed more to younger faces now, and that's great, that's how it should be, but when you're 50 and you're funny, you think, well, where does that leave me? I was talking to Jasper Carrott recently, and he said, 'If they don't want my excellence, then I don't know what I can do. All I've got is my ability to nail a joke properly. And if they don't want that, fuck 'em'." And yet there remains something in Henry that finds making jokes for a living at 50 unseemly. What is important in life, he says, is to look for new things, scare yourself. Which is why he's doing Othello.

There are other good reasons were not seeing so much of Henry. Half the year, he says, he spends as a housefather looking after his and French's 17-year-old daughter, Billie. Then there are his studies. Henry left school with no qualifications. In the 80s, he took his English and maths O-levels. In 2007, he graduated from the Open University with an English degree and is now studying for an MA in screenwriting.

Did he want to study because he felt inadequate in the company of the swotty alternative crowd? No, he says, it was for his mother. She had always hoped he would continue his studies, and he felt he had let her down. In 1998, she died, and that was when he decided to realise her dream for him.

The more he learned about literature and the media, the less interested he became in mass success. At the same time, he became more confident in his writing. Beforehand, he had contributed to his sketches, but that was all. "I always felt slightly jealous about the person who stayed behind to write it. I always wanted to co-write, but never had the discipline. Then, when I did my BA, I realised everything was about editing and cutting."

His mother's death had another, less positive, effect. He was lost without her. In 1999 he checked into the Priory with depression, shortly after a tabloid expose claimed he had spent the night with a receptionist. ('True', the woman later said, 'but we never did anything'.)

Funny, I say, how he managed to be a red-top love rat without even sleeping with the woman. He says nothing. The seconds tick past. Eventually he speaks. "In the end, I do think it was a midlife flip. I was a bit of a twat. My mum was the touchstone, the centre, the person, for all of us in the family. And when she went, for me it was chaos. After six years of therapy, I came out the other end. I had to have major grief counselling, I was so discombobulated". How did this express itself? "Drinking too much, bad decisions."

Did Dawn give you the bollocking of your life after the hotel incident? He looks at me. "Well, what d'you expect? It's a private thing, but what do you think happened behind closed doors?"

Are you surprised you are still together? "It made us closer, I think. There was a lot of talking and working things out. We went through a bad period, like lots of people. If I'd been a plumber and she was a teacher, you wouldn't give a fuck. But because we were in showbusiness, everybody was interested. And it was unfortunate that we had to work things out slightly in public."

What must have also been tough is that as his career was waning, French was more successful than ever as writer, actor, comedian, author. He suggests that she's the exception and his career trajectory has been closer to the norm. "It would be crazy if I was as successful as I used to be. Who can sustain that? Its about challenging yourself; wanting to do things that push you." He cites several recent projects he's proud of - a radio series on Shakespeare, directing a short film for Kick Racism Out Of Football, the studying.

Do he and French compete on the work front? "Dawn is the funniest woman in the world as far as I'm concerned, and there's no point in competing." He talks about her with immense pride.

The thing he has discovered, much to his relief, is that he doesn't have to be funny all the time. "I always thought it was a slight mental illness, comedians who never stopped trying, who always wanted to be funny. I slightly weaned myself off that because that's very much, Mummy! Mummmmmy! Mummmmmmmmy! I had to stop it because I didn't want to be mentally ill. It's like being Batman and Bruce Wayne. You've got to choose your moment. There's moments to be Bruce Wayne and moments to be Batman, and I didn't want to be Batman all the time. And actually, the good work happens by experiencing life."

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A Life in the Day: Lenny Henry
The comic and actor, 51, on drama, dog-walking and ‘admin-type stupidity’
Interview by Matt Munday

With me, every day is different. There are writing days when I get up at six and come down and just start writing. My brain is still bubbling, still in a weird dream state. That’s when the best ideas come. I’m doing an MA at the Royal Holloway college at the moment, where you basically learn how to write and structure films and TV. I’m doing this screenplay for my MA, so I’ll write from 6 till 9.

I might sneak into the loo, then get a cup of tea and an orange or something. But if you don’t glue your arse to the chair you’re not going to get the work done. So, three hours writing, then I might have breakfast. Either scrambled eggs or low-fat yoghurt and berries with honey on top. I try to be healthy, though can I just clearly state that there have been full English, and there will continue to be, but just not every day. Dawn makes a brilliant full English. The secret is diligence and fantastic ingredients: fresh organic eggs, great bacon, proper sausages.

Then it’s the gym for an hour, an hour and 20 sometimes. I do a mixture of cardio and weights, and then I go to work. I’m doing a lot of children’s stuff at the moment. So it could be that a car comes to take me to a studio where I do four hours of voiceover. But there are other kinds of day. On a filming day I’ll get up at 5, get ready, and the car’s waiting and you go and do filming all day. On a telly day you rehearse four days a week and then do the show on the Friday or the Saturday.

We’ve got a house in Cornwall, but a lot of our work is in London, so we’ve got a flat there. Our daughter, Billie [18], lives with us in Cornwall, but she goes to boarding school. Whenever we spend time away and then come back we find, like, three tons of mail. You can’t open the door because of all the bills, the fanmail, the Amazon.co.uk packages… Amazon’s a great thing, isn’t it?

I buy music every day. But I’ve found myself going through these secondhand “you can bring your bike in here and we’ll give you albums” kind of shops. You know, “Bring a chair, we’ll give you Songs in the Key of Life.” I miss that ka-thump of the albums banging against each other when you rifle through them. There’s camaraderie in record shops — we’re all geeks and slightly isolated people who just like buying records. When I’m on the road I’ll go into record shops, and I’ll try to find a comic shop because I collect comics.

Records, comics and books take a lot of my time. And then I spend a lot of time doing things like: “Did you lose the charger for the phone? Well, we’d better get a new one.” Or: “This thing doesn’t work on the computer, you’ve got to go to the Apple shop.” So there’s a lot of admin-type stupidity. And if I’m in London there’s usually two or three phone calls a day, trying to catch up with my daughter and my missus.

For lunch I’ll have something like lamb and salad. I’m trying to be more conscious of what I take in because Othello’s coming up. I have to get in shape, because nowhere in the script does it say: “He is pushed on in a trolley.” Of course, in Cornwall the irresistible thing is the pasty. It’s sort of a big handbag full of meat and potatoes. If you get involved with that, that’s a million calories right there. You might as well just strap one to each hip. And when I go and see my family, Jamaican food’s incredibly starchy and fatty. Which is why nearly everyone in my family is huge!

My favourite restaurant in London, in Soho, is called Mr Jerk, and I had rice and peas there once and it made me cry because it was like my mum’s cooking. I don’t know what happened to me. I had all these memories, this immense childhood rush. It’s amazing that food can do that to you. I think the man said: “Come on, the restaurant isn’t that bad… If you were at the Ivy you’d pay four times as much!”

In the evening I’ll usually have fish or something. Apart from the odd bit of EastEnders or Britain’s Got Talent, we don’t watch much telly, though Dawn watches it more. And I watch a hell of a lot of movies, because of the MA. I love comedy, though I find the things I want to write have a more serious side. But I think most comics would say that.

I’ll walk the dog last thing before bed. She’s a westie called Dolly. I take her out about 10.30. Sometimes we do it en famille, other times it’s just me. And you have to do it in all weathers. But I quite like it. I’m usually in bed by 11, and that’s when I tend to do half an hour of reading. I’m a voracious reader.

I go to sleep reasonably well. In Cornwall I have the last throes of the seagulls to contend with — they lull me to sleep. I tend to dream a lot, in Technicolor. I never dream in the style of EastEnders; it’s always a big palaver — three hours in the style of Charlie Kaufman last night. I’m lucky to be alive.

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'I constantly ask myself if I'm doing the right thing'
Certainties have been lacking in Lenny Henry's life. But, on the eve of a new tour, he tells Rob Sharp that he'll always have stand-up
17 January 2011
The Independent

Three days before the launch of a nationwide stand-up tour, Lenny Henry is feeling the strain of his numerous commitments. His face looks drawn and his mood is sombre. The first thing he says is: "How long is this interview going to take? Because I'm afraid my daughter is going to set the house on fire."

The comment is surprising from a man so known for his amiability, but in his defence, it is Friday evening and his current itinerary is gruelling. As well as last-minute rehearsals for the tour – From Cradle To Rave – he is also promoting Magicians, a light entertainment show on BBC1. As well as sharing parenting duties with his ex-wife Dawn French for their 19-year-old daughter, Billie, he is also undertaking a PhD in screenwriting at London's Royal Holloway, although, perhaps understandably, that may be on hold until his tour completes later this year.

Henry's workaholic nature has made him one of Britain's best-known comics. His 35-year career began when he appeared as a finalist on the TV talent show New Faces in 1976, and continued through The Lenny Henry Show, which ran intermittently on BBC1 between 1984 and 2005. Forays into Hollywood, character-based comedy and music followed, and his fame peaked with his involvement with Comic Relief in the 1990s. In 2009, Henry reinvented himself yet again with a critically acclaimed title performance in a West Yorkshire Playhouse production of Othello, which later went to the West End.

That such a cripplingly busy day job took its toll on Henry's private life is perhaps no surprise. In October, Henry completed his divorce from French, with whom he had a 26-year marriage. He has said his work commitments "probably didn't help". The couple are still friends, but Henry looks morose when the subject comes up, and he leaves long pauses between sentences. "It's just the way it is. We're good friends. It's just the way it is."

Speaking in a London hotel, Henry, 52, is more effusive when discussing work. He talks passionately about music, the focus of From Cradle to Rave, and enthuses about the 28-days' worth of songs on his iPod, everything from Marvin Gaye to Dizzee Rascal. He is a keen scholar of comedy, and controversially defends Frankie Boyle, recently embroiled in a row over his use of racial language in a joke about British soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

"Controversial comedians have always been around," Henry says. "From Max Miller to Alexei Sayle to Frankie Boyle. Richard Pryor was controversial in his day. The American comedian Robert Schimmel only did material about porn. There are some people who say you can make jokes about anything. And it's up to you whether you like it. If you don't, you can turn over the channel."

In person, Henry is physically imposing, too big for the poorly-sprung sofa on which he perches. He is emotionally transparent, candidly discussing his weaknesses and strengths, immediately making him genial. An intense interviewee, he segues from jokingly threatening physical violence to comedic yelps. He brands From Cradle to Rave "autobiographic-com". It tells his life story through the songs that have inspired him. "The show should be called Lenny Mia, because it has better jokes and no songs by Abba," he laughs.

Henry's story began in the West Midlands town of Dudley, where he was born in 1958 to working class Jamaican parents. While he says he worshipped his mother, he had a more strained relationship with his Dad. "He never talked very much. He was quite a negative influence in my life. In 1977, seven days before he died, he started telling me stories and wouldn't shut up. I felt really cheated."

He says his parents never sang to him. His father, especially, withheld affection. Henry, though, clearly dotes on his daughter, and claims to have read her every Harry Potter book cover to cover, impersonating Professor Dumbledore in the style of Tommy Cooper. His concern for her well-being seems to fulfil a need not to repeat the mistakes of his parents.

In From Cradle to Rave, there are further regrets. He discusses whether he could have made a career for himself as a soul singer. At the height of his fame, his smooth-crooning character Theophilus P Wildebeest attracted music industry interest. But he had a meeting with the producer Trevor Horn, which put him off. "He talked about the idea of committing totally to music or ... he was sort of saying don't be a dilettante. I said ... comedy has paid for my Mum's house. Music is good fun but it's a hobby."

It was French who suggested Henry should try serious acting, and his turn as Othello paid off. "I was expecting to review a theatrical car crash," the Daily Telegraph theatre critic Charles Spencer wrote of Henry's performance. "This is one of the most astonishing debuts in Shakespeare I have ever seen."

His keenness to take risks has therefore eased the transitions in his career, which has spanned three decades. A comedian fast becoming an institution, he also says he is watching and learning from today's cutting-edge comics.

Necessarily, Henry says he is much better equipped to deal with the competitive stand-up circuit than the fresh-faced naif of yesteryear.

"When I first started I didn't know what I was doing," he says. "It was survival. I was thrown into the deep end. I saw my first appearance on New Faces quite recently, and I was really moved by it. I used to get up in the middle of discos and try material out. I've only just come back to that over the last five years, going to clubs and seeing what people think about my material. Road-testing it."

So, 30 years of comedy and one marriage later, in the words of 1980s funksters Odyssey, Henry has gone back to his roots. There's a catch, though. "Part of me wonders whether I don't like myself very much," he concludes. "I've always had to ask myself whether I'm doing the right thing over the years and the constant touchstone is the stand-up."

He departs the hotel with a swift handshake, and while waiting for his taxi, asks whether he has been a cooperative-enough interviewee. He still looks exhausted. His eagerness to please, it seems, is as much a key to his never-ending fame as it is a constant weight upon his broad shoulders. He is still, however, the man.

Lenny Henry's 67-date nationwide From Cradle to Rave tour begins tonight at Newbury's Corn Exchange. For more information visit lennyhenry.com

A Life in Brief

Born in Dudley in the West Midlands in 1958 to Jamaican immigrant parents, a 16-year-old Henry got his first break on the talent show New Faces. Henry moved from impressions to character-based comedy on the children's show Tiswas. As well as touring as a stand-up, his career spanned sitcom, sketch and drama, and his Othello received widespread acclaim.

He received a CBE in 1999 for services to charity including Comic Relief, which he co-founded in 1985. After 25 years of marriage, Lenny and Dawn French separated in 2010.

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Interview: Lenny Henry, comedian
He may be on 65-date tour that revisits his musical roots, studying for a PhD and preparing to play Shakespeare again, but that's just Lenny Henry finally chilling out
Susan Mansfield
10th April 2011
Scotland on Sunday

IT WAS one of those moments when you have to choose, Lenny Henry says. A moment when things could have gone either way.
He's talking about the day when he almost packed in his comedy career to become a singer.
Of course, we know Henry can sing. We've heard him do Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé, 50 Cent. But, in the 1980s, he was writing songs, playing demo tapes to the likes of Simon Cowell and Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, Encouraging noises were made, but when it came to the crunch, he drew back.

Now, it makes a good story: "I had a music manager, and he used to put me together with musicians and say "try and write songs with those guys". So I'd be stuck in a bedroom or a bedsit or a basement with some guys who were trying to find a snare drum sound all day. And the amount of weird substances they smoked added to the time it took to find the snare drum sound. I realised that being a comedian, you're incredibly impatient, you want to write a song in the morning and sing it in the afternoon.

"In the end I couldn't make the decision to give up comedy and do music because comedy was my life, and it had bought my mum a house. I wasn't going to forgo the ability to help my family for this maybe/maybe-not existence: maybe you could get a hit record, maybe you won't. I couldn't take the risk, and so I didn't."

Now 52, he is doing what might be the next best thing, Cradle To Rave, a stand-up show about music in which he sings and plays the piano ("I've never played an instrument on stage before – when I get up, I literally have the piano stool wedged between the cheeks of my bum I'm so scared"). Two-thirds into a 65-date tour, he has a punishing schedule of interviews to promote the remaining gigs, but he still manages to sound enthusiastic. He says it might be the best show he's ever done.

If Lenny Henry were a rock band, this would be the comeback tour: the kind of good, solid, entertaining fare that reminds people what you're good at. Or else it would be the kind of marathon project a man throws himself into to take his mind off his divorce (Henry's split from Dawn French, his wife of 25 years, was finalised in October). But it isn't quite as simple as that.

Henry is tall, broad-shouldered, the kind of man who takes possession of a room. In his dark suit, dark shirt, dark tie, he looks sombre, meditative. From time to time, his elastic face comes alive with impressions – he does his dad, Elvis, his 1980s character Theophilus P Wildebeest ("I believe in safe sex, never make love in the same room as a leopard!"). But his own voice is more measured. He seems both more thoughtful and more comfortable in his own skin than the frenetic comic of 20 years ago.

"I do throw myself into things," he says. "I'm trying not to do it so much. I think over the past 36 years there has been a lot of work, a lot of touring, a lot of stand-up, a lot of television, and only in the last couple of years have I started to think, 'Actually, let's slow down, let's not do everything'. I think running around trying to do six things at once is not good, and I've been a victim of that in the past."

Both he and French, who had what was regarded as one of the most stable marriages in showbusiness, have talked about how amicable their split has been. Henry has to remind himself to describe her as "ex-wife" not "wife". "We're friends, you know. Very good friends. We always will be. And also we have a daughter (Billie, 19, who lives with Henry).

It's majorly important for us to remain friends for our daughter's sake. We had lots of talking, we decided to remain friends, and once we'd made that decision everything else was pretty straightforward, really. Our daughter is the most important thing." Is he happy? "I'm as happy as can be expected a year after getting divorced. I think I'm doing all right. And I think my wife – my ex-wife – is doing all right too."

In Cradle To Rave, he has been digging deep into earlier memories. Broadway director Sam Buntrock came to his house and stayed for four days while Henry told him his life story. As a result, he delved into memories he didn't know he had, particularly about his father, who died when he was 19.

Henry has spoken often about his mother, an indomitable figure who seems to have dragged seven kids into adulthood largely by the force of her own personality. But he has never talked about his father, a foundry worker, who had little time for his children. "He would come in, slam his bag down, go upstairs, have a bath, leave most of himself in the bath when he got out, then he'd come downstairs and take over the television remote control. Basically, a miserable git, though he loved us, I guess.

"But just before he died, he became incredibly open about all the aspects of his life. For a week I would visit him every day in hospital and he would talk about things he did in Jamaica, and what it was like when he first came to England. And then he died. I felt privileged but I also felt robbed." The only thing Henry senior had to say about his son's showbiz career was (cue deep Jamaican accent): "Be sure to keep your feet on de ground."

Henry made his stage debut at the age of 15 at Dudley's Queen Mary Ballroom singing Elvis songs. A year later, he triumphed as a comic and impressionist on ITV's New Faces. It was fame, but no fairytale.

Suddenly, at 16, he found himself doing stand-up comedy in pubs, working men's clubs, summer seasons in Blackpool, often the youngest person in the room and the only black man.

"It was very difficult in the first few years. It was a real struggle to live up to people's expectations. I was expected to be on a par with very successful television comedians, and if I wasn't up to standard, people would boo or start talking or read the paper. You're in a very adult world, that's what you realise. I was thrown in the deep end and made to swim, and I think the psychological damage of that is huge, really."

He has been reflecting on this as he looks at Billie, who is at equestrian school. They started piano lessons together when she was seven, and he was 40. "She now plays like Ray Charles crossed with Elton John, and I am still looking at sheet music and going, 'is that an A flat', though I'm getting better. She can sing and she's a natural musician, but she's not interested (in showbusiness] and I'm glad really. When we look at her, we think it's too young. You're talking about a person who (cue disgruntled father voice) can't tidy their bedroom. Why should they be able to do the London Palladium on their own?"

Six years after New Faces, Henry was back on TV presenting Tiswas with Chris Tarrant, followed by Three Of A Kind, and, in 1988, The Lenny Henry Show. He did have a phase, he says, when he "was on a mission to try to emulate my hero, Richard Pryor. And of course what's very interesting is you're not Richard Pryor, you're you. The first time I went to America to work (in 1991 to make the film True Identity), I realised there was a problem. America already had Richard Pryor. I had to be myself. That occasioned massive soul-searching. It made me realise that I was an actor more than anything else. I'd only done stand-up comedy to appease the people who were producing my television show. Now I'm much more secure in my abilities as a stand-up and as a character comedian."

He also came to realise he loved learning. At the BBC, he was surrounded by graduates who "had frames of reference that I just didn't have". On the first ever Lenny Henry Show he did a sketch written for him called "The Harold Pinter Weather", with lengthy pauses between each line. The audience roared with laughter. Henry had to ask someone to explain the joke. Already an established name, he went to college and did his A levels.

He graduated from the Open University with a degree in English Literature in 2007, did a masters in film writing and is currently working on a PhD. In 2009, he starred in a West Yorkshire Playhouse production of Othello which was critically acclaimed and transferred to the West End.

He will do Comedy Of Errors with the National Theatre in the autumn. Itis all part of the new Lenny Henry determined to take life at a slower pace. Which brings us back to music, and the confession that he has 28 days' worth of tracks – "probably 29 now" – downloaded on iTunes. "Maybe the whole challenge of life, the whole 'stop and smell the roses' thing for me will be 'stop and listen to the album'. I think it's quite good to chill sometimes and listen to all the Songs In The Key Of Life (by Stevie Wonder), in the right order, including the 7-inch single, and read the booklet at the same time. There's nothing wrong with that."

Lenny Henry: Cradle To Rave is at the King's Theatre, Glasgow, 18 April; Aberdeen Music Hall, 19 April; Alhambra Theatre, Dunfermline, 22 April; and Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 24 April