October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Lenny Henry is an English stand-up comedian, actor, singer, writer and television presenter, known for co-founding the charity Comic Relief, and appearing in TV programmes including children’s entertainment show Tiswas, sitcom Chef! and The Magicians for BBC One.
Henry was born in Dudley in 1958, the fifth of seven children. When he was 10 years old, he learned that his biological father was Albert Augustus ‘Bertie’ Green, another Jamaican immigrant and a family friend with whom his mother had a brief relationship when she first arrived in England.
His earliest television appearance was on the talent show New Faces, which he won in 1975. The following year he appeared with Norman Beaton in LWT’s sitcom The Fosters, Britain’s first comedy series with predominantly black performers. He also performed in working men’s clubs, with occasional TV appearances.
He co-hosted the children’s programme Tiswas from 1978 until 1981, and subsequently performed and wrote for the show Three of a Kind. In 1980, he teamed up with alternative-comedy collective The Comic Strip, where he met his wife, comedian Dawn French (the couple divorced in 2010). She encouraged him to move over into alternative comedy, where he established a career as a stand-up comedy performer and character comedian.
The first series of The Lenny Henry Show appeared on the BBC in 1984, and the series ran periodically for a further nineteen years. Henry starred in film and on TV, including the comedy series Chef!, as well as the BBC drama Hope And Glory.
He appeared as a backing singer on Kate Bush’s album The Red Shoes in 1993, and at Amnesty International’s Big 3-0 fund raising concert. He co-founded Comic Relief, and has hosted the show and presented filmed reports from overseas on the work of the charity. In February 2009, he appeared in the title role in the Northern Broadsides production of Othello at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.
He graduated with a BA Hons in English Literature, from the Open University, in 2007. He studied for an MA at Royal Holloway, London in screenwriting for television and film, where he received a distinction, and in 2010 he began studying at the same institution for a PhD on the role of black people in the media, which he received in 2018.
Henry was appointed a CBE in the 1999 New Year Honours. He was knighted in 2015 for services to drama and charity. In 2016, Henry became the chancellor of Birmingham City University; was made a fellow of the Royal Television Society; was awarded the BAFTA Television Special Award; and received an honorary doctorate from Nottingham Trent University.
More about Lenny Henry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_Henry