Lenny Henry
Henry in the 1980s
Born	Lenworth George Henry (1958-08-29) 29 August 1958 (age 53) Dudley, Worcestershire (now West Midlands), England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Actor, Comedian, Activist, Writer
Years active	1975–present
Spouse	Dawn French (m. 1984–2010) «start: (1984-10-20)–end+1: (2010-10-26)»"Marriage: Dawn French to Lenny Henry" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Lenny_Henry) (divorced)
Children	Adopted daughter, Billie
Website
http://www.lennyhenry.com/

Lenworth George "Lenny" Henry, CBE (born 29 August 1958) is a British actor, writer, comedian and occasional television presenter.

Early life[link]

This section requires expansion.

Henry, the son of Jamaican immigrants, was born at Burton Road Hospital in Dudley in 1958. He was a pupil at St John's Primary School and later The Blue Coat School outside Dudley, before completing his school education at W.R. Tuson College (now Preston College).^[1][2]

Career[link]

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Early career[link]

His first manager was Robert Luff, who signed him in 1975 and gave him the opportunity to perform as part of the Luff-produced touring stage version of The Black and White Minstrel Show.^[3] In July 2009, Lenny Henry stated he was contractually obliged to perform and regretted his part in the show.^[4]

Shortly before this, on 17 December 1974, the then 16-year-old Henry had been voted Britain's top non-smoker for his declaration aimed at teenagers that smoking was not fashionable.^[5]

His earliest television appearance was on the New Faces talent show, which he won in 1975 with an impersonation of Stevie Wonder.^[6] The following year he appeared with Norman Beaton in LWT's sitcom The Fosters, Britain's first comedy series with predominantly black performers. His formative years were spent in working men's clubs, where his act was as a young black man impersonating white characters such as the Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em character Frank Spencer (whom he impersonated on New Faces). He also made guest appearances on television programmes including Celebrity Squares, Seaside Special and The Ronnie Corbett Show.^[7]

1980s[link]

In 1980, he performed in Summer Season in Blackpool with Cannon and Ball.^[7][8] He has since said that "the summer season was the first time [he] felt that [his] act had received a proper response from an audience".^[8] Around the same time, he co-hosted the children's programme Tiswas from 1978 until 1981, and subsequently performed and wrote for the show Three of a Kind, with comedians Tracey Ullman and David Copperfield.

Also in 1980, he teamed up with The Comic Strip where he met his wife, comedienne Dawn French.^[9] She encouraged him to move over to the fledgling alternative comedy scene, where he established a career as a stand-up comedy performer and character comedian. He introduced characters who both mocked and celebrated black British culture, such as Theophilus P. Wildebeeste (an homage to Teddy Pendergrass using the 'TP' initials), Brixton pirate radio disc jockey DJ Delbert Wilkins and Trevor MacDoughnut (a parody of Trevor McDonald). His stand-up material, which sold well on LP, owed much to the writing abilities of Kim Fuller. During this time he also spent three years as a DJ on BBC Radio 1, playing soul and electro tracks and introducing some of the characters that he would later popularise on television. He made a guest appearance in the final episode of The Young Ones as The Postman, in 1984.

The first series of The Lenny Henry Show appeared on the BBC in 1984. The show featured stand up, spoofs like his send up of Michael Jackson's Thriller video, and many of the characters he had developed during Summer Season, including Theophilus P. Wildebeeste and Delbert Wilkins. A principal scriptwriter for his television and stage shows during the 1990s was Jon Canter.^[10][11] The Lenny Henry Show ran for a further 20 years in various incarnations.

Prior to the 1987 general election (UK), Henry lent his support to Red Wedge by participating in a comedy tour organised by the campaign.^[12]

In 1987, he appeared in a TV film Coast to Coast. It was a comedy thriller with John Shea about two DJ's with a shared passion for Motown music being chased across Britain. The film has a strong following, but contractual problems^[13] have prevented it from being distributed on video or DVD.

1990s[link]

In the early 1990s, Henry starred in the Hollywood film True Identity, in which his character pretended to be a white person (using make-up, prostheses, and a wig) in order to avoid the mob. The film was not commercially successful.

In 1991, he starred in a BBC drama alongside Robbie Coltrane called Alive and Kicking, in which he played a heroin addict, which was based on a true story.

Also in 1991, he starred in the Christmas comedy Bernard and the Genie along side Alan Cumming and Rowan Atkinson.

Henry is known as the choleric chef Gareth Blackstock from the 1990s television comedy series Chef!, or from his 1999 straight-acting lead role in the BBC drama Hope And Glory. He was co-creator with Neil Gaiman and producer of the 1996 BBC drama serial Neverwhere.

Henry tried his hand at soul singing, appearing, for example, as a backing singer on Kate Bush's album The Red Shoes (1993) and, backed by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, at Amnesty International's Big 3-0 fund raising concert. He would later say that neither move showed him at his best, and that he felt most comfortable with character comedy. Henry would occasionally return to singing, performing in small local venues in the West Midlands. Henry returned to the BBC to do Lenny Henry in Pieces, a character-based comedy sketch show which was followed by The Lenny Henry Show, in which he combined stand-up, character sketches and song parodies.

2000s[link]

In 2003, Henry was listed in The Observer as one of the fifty funniest acts in British comedy.

In 2004, he was listed in The Sunday Times as the fifteenth funniest black performer of all time. Henry is associated with the British Comic Relief charity organisation, along with his former wife, comedienne Dawn French, and Griff Rhys Jones, and has hosted the show and also presented filmed reports from overseas on the work of the charity. He was the voice of the British speaking clock for two weeks, 10–23 March 2003, in aid of Comic Relief.

He was the voice of the "shrunken head" on the Knight Bus in the 2004 movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and read the audio book version of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. He also voices a character on the children's show Little Robots.

Henry appeared in advertisements for butter products in New Zealand, commissioned by the company now known as Fonterra, as well as portraying Saint Peter in the Virgin Mobile advertising campaign in South Africa. In the UK, he used his character of Theophilus P. Wildebeeste to advertise Alpen muesli, and promoted the non-alcoholic lager, Kaliber.