Lenny Henry: Humor, Trauma, and Flipping the Cosmic Spatula
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Humor. Armour. Racism. Voice. How our youth really shapes why we want to do what we wanna do, especially when we are drawn to the stage…this long yarn with Sir Lenny Henry, one of the most celebrated comedians in British history, was one for the books. We talk candidly about the paradoxes of celebrity and social media, how The Internet is a buffet, starting a career in entertainment in working mens’ clubs, using humor as armor against racism, the history of minstrelsy in the UK, making your work the structure of your life, giving your loved ones fair warning when you publish a memoir, the beautiful meld of words and images in comic books, the power of masks and fiction and why giving advice to younger artists is so important.
Episode 2 of The Art of Asking Everything: Lenny Henry: Humor, Trauma, and Flipping the Cosmic Spatula is out now wherever you get your podcasts.
Here’s a link to all the places you can get and subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything
Here’s a link to info about the patron-only podcast book club, we’ll be live-chatting at the end of October:
https://forum.theshadowbox.net/c/podcast-book-club/19
Show notes:
Description
Amanda Palmer presents: an intimate conversation with Lenny Henry, recorded December 17, 2019 in London.
Lenny Henry is one of the most successful British stand-up comedians of all time. In 1975, at just 17, his career took off when he was a repeat winner on the weekly TV talent show, “New Faces.” He went on to host his own sketch comedy program, “The Lenny Henry Show,” starting in 1984. Later, Lenny stared in the 90’s BBC sitcom, “Chef!” Lenny is a founder, front-man and a creative force behind the charity Comic Relief.
In this episode we talk about the paradoxes of celebrity and social media, how the internet is a buffet, starting a career in entertainment in Working Mans’ Clubs, using humor as armor against racism, the history of minstrelsy in the UK, making your work the structure of your life, giving your loved ones fair warning when you publish a memoir, the beautiful meld of words and images in comic books, the power of masks and fiction and why giving advice to younger artists is so important.
Lenny Online
Twitter:
@LennyHenry
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CREDITS:
Many, many thanks to my guest Lenny Henry, Sir Lenny Henry. The engineer for this interview was Christo Squier. The theme song you heard at the beginning is a song called “Bottomfeeder“, from my 2012 crowdfunded album, Theatre is Evil. I would like to give a shout out to Jherek Bischoff, my soul-brother who arranged the in-betweeny orchestral music you heard in this podcast, those are all little snippets from my latest album, There Will Be No Intermission, which you should listen to if you like really sad songs. For all the music you heard in this episode you can go to the new and improved amandapalmer.net/podcast. A million thanks to my podcast assistant, social media helper and additional engineer Xanthea O’Connor. A lot of thanks are due to team AFP: Hayley, Michael, Jordan and Alex, I love you guys so much. Special thanks to Nick Rizzuto, Brittney Bomberger, Allie Cohen, and Braxton Carter.
And most importantly this podcast would not be possible without all of my patrons, about 15,000 of them, so that we can have this space with no ads, no sponsors, no censorship. We are the media. Please go to my Patreon, become a member, you can get extra stuff and also tune into the follow up live conversations that I’m doing with almost every guest of this podcast and also there are pictures, transcripts, notes, links and lots of other things. Those are my chickens by the way – can you hear them?
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Amanda Palmer
Hello, sir.
Lenny Henry
Hello.
Amanda Palmer
You’re a sir?
Lenny Henry
I’m a sir, yeah.
I was attacked by the Queen with a big sword. And at the end of it I did not get 100 men or a castle. I just got to be called sir, which seems to affect older people more than younger people. The younger people just treat me like uncle Len. And the older people do a lot of ?? which is really weird. I never had a forlock done before. I didn’t even know it was a thing. But it’s actually a thing!
Amanda Palmer
Do you think that that’s because they’re old now? Or do you think that any old people in the future would feel the same way just because you get that way when you’re old?
Lenny Henry
I think older people sort of have this idea about the monarchy, that sort of shiny and more mythical than people who are on social media and see them being trolled and stuff. If you see the way Megan or Kate or anybody gets trolled on Twitter or whatever. There’s been a real egalitarian thing going on with just bringing people down to size and I think there’s good things and bad things about that. On the on the one side you go well yeah, people should have access to celebrities, what’s all this secret hiding, hiding away stuff. And on the other hand, as a person who’s been in public eye since I was 16 years old, there is a slight invasion of privacy issue which worries me about social media. That everybody’s got a camera, that people know your business that people can do three clicks and know all about your business, you know? With the older generation, there’s still this kind of veneration of the royal family that is kind of legit thing whatever the politics of it what do you think of empire? There’s the legit thing of yeah, the queen, she’s on my money. She’s cool.
Amanda Palmer
In the old school of royalty pre information, access social media everywhere, they had a lot more control over their boundaries.
Lenny Henry
Yeah, what you could what you could and couldn’t do, what you could and couldn’t see.
Amanda Palmer
What people wouldn’t and wouldn’t find out.
Lenny Henry
Yeah, you were allowed into their house at Christmas and you saw them around a Christmas tree. Hello merry Christmas one and all, but you never saw them do any other stuff. Or you kind of hear a whiff of something, but it was never, it wasn’t your business. So it’s not for you to know really. Well, I mean, I you know, for normal people, that was the norm, but now what’s interesting is there’s been this extraordinary elbowing out of boundaries. And now people can have access to know anything they want. And I don’t know whether we should be scared about or whether we should think it’s cool.
Amanda Palmer
That is actually like the paradox of my life.
Lenny Henry
Yes. Because you’re very much on the internet, aren’t you, Amanda?
Amanda Palmer
Well, yeah, unless I’m not but also.
Lenny Henry
You having a rest of the moment?
Amanda Palmer
I’m having a little Twitter rest at the moment, but also, I have been on the receiving end of incredible generosity, connection, real authentic, beautiful communication. Like I have seen the good side of the internet. And I’ve also seen, like some of the ugliest darkness, and it’s a real cost benefit tightrope walk that you do going like ‘well, is it really, really good and especially, you know, 2009 is not like 2019 when we have seen what is actually possible with social media on the dark side.
Lenny Henry
Yes, I think you’re right about that. I think it’s very much a buffet.
Amanda Palmer
Read the ingredient list.
Lenny Henry
Well we should just look at it and choose exactly what we want rather than just going I’m going to eat everything. All you can eat in Vegas.
Amanda Palmer
It should remind us how new it is. Like, it just all looks so delicious. It is like the first time you walk into like an incredible fancy hotel brunch buffet and you’re like ahhh. Literally I could eat
Literally, I could eat 12 eggs because they’re just right.
Lenny Henry
I could eat everything!!
Amanda Palmer
And they’re free.
Lenny Henry
Yeah, so there is that sense that the internet is growing and there’s so much stuff to do. There’s a guy doing 100 impressions in two minutes. There’s a father talk to his baby. And it’s like, and the baby’s talking baby talk but the dad’s talking proper English, and it’s really cute. And aww look at the otters holding hands. You know, there’s so much to enjoy.
Amanda Palmer
It’s everything all at once.
Lenny Henry
It’s everything all at once, and it’s a barrage of information. And who’s controlling them? Who’s who’s controlling the news on that? Who’s how do we know it’s true? How do we know?
Amanda Palmer
Elon Musk.
Lenny Henry
Duh duh duh.
So we have to be careful.
Amanda Palmer
Yes, we don’t have a lot of time and I desperately want to ask you 8 billion questions.
Lenny Henry
You started this!
Amanda Palmer
Sorry!
Lenny Henry
About the Internet. Carry on!
Amanda Palmer
Actually, it started with the queen. I just finished reading your book. It’s called Who am I? Again, It is an autobiography. I would argue it’s a partial autobiography. Really deftly covers whole sections of your life.
Lenny Henry
Yeah. It goes from birth to 20. I did a children’s program called Tis Was where everybody got covered in custard pies. That’s basically the show.
Amanda Palmer
Sounds great.
Lenny Henry
Whether you’re Phil Collins or Annie Lennox, or The Pretenders, people got drenched in water and covenant custard pies by a guy dressed entirely and black, called the Phantom Flan flinger, who would show up out of nowhere from behind the scenery thing or a pop up from a desk and just shove a crusted pie in your face. And for two hours on a Saturday morning, that was it. For me for six years. It was always very funny. We had people in the cage. They’d be students, doctors, lawyers, teachers in a cage holding on and then every so often, the host of the show would run across to the cage and throw 15 buckets of water at the people in the cage. And they’d be in there all morning. And we had a waiting list of people to be in the cage. They’d be like all these really posh and high falutin people who wanted to be in the cage to say I’ve been in the cage on Tis Was. Tis Was, by the way stood for today is Saturday watch and smile. And we had cartoons. We had Warner brother cartoons. We had clips from shows. We had people coming on to plug their book or their movie or their TV show. But it was mainly a kid show. However, what they found out was, when they did the demographics, 52% of the audience were over 18. So it was sort of a grownups show, just on a Saturday morning, which is we’re all used to that now, but in the 70s and early 80s that was a really new, exciting place to be because you couldn’t be really rude. But you could be clever. And you could be cheeky, there was a line and you could dance up to the line and maybe even cross it a bit. But you knew where the line was. And it was really good fun. And I would argue that every Saturday morning show you watch on British television has an element of Tis Was in it in the way that people talk to the camera, in the way that they improvise or mess around, in the way that when there’s a mistake people sort of riff around it, you know, but it’s very Tis Was that stuff. People have slightly gone off the custard pies and the water and the cage is definitely a no no now, particularly when there’s kids around.
Amanda Palmer
I felt so many things reading your book and one of the things that I found myself looking at is the immense number of things we have in common.
As performers, especially there’s this whole beautiful thread going through the whole book about your insecurities.
Lenny Henry
Yeah.
Amanda Palmer
Which I love because you’re so honest about it, starting with your childhood years and then through your teens, it, it’s not like you land at this place of ultimate security. You’re 60 now right? And you can still see you kind of picking up these things in these moments and in your career and in your life and examining them and going like, I’m not really sure about this.
Lenny Henry
I started when I was 15. And I was doing these working men’s clothes, working men’s club is attached to a factory. It’s a space for the factory workers to spend their money that they’ve just earned working for the factory. And they’ll be about 300 people. They’ll be a club secretary; they’ll be entertainment on a Friday or Saturday night. And they’ll be meat pies and chips and potato chips and beer. And you could have a big show on a Saturday night and usually, they might have somebody that would be on television who’d been on television or had a whiff of celebrity and they will be the top of the bill of the people will be on like a ventriloquist. They’ll be a girl singer: “I got the music me and got no trouble in my life that be that” and there’d be a comedian. And there’d be a top of the bill. I was 16 years old. I’d won a talent competition. And suddenly I was the top of the bill in these places and I had no business being in these places. I was too young. I had no material. I had basically six minutes of material that I’d been doing on television, and I was trying to make that stretch over an hour and I couldn’t do it. So I was in a real, there weren’t tears every night, but I was on the road doing these clubs, feeling really sorry for myself. And just having an awful time because of the racism that was pervading everywhere you went there was this weird racism. This is Britain in the late 70s, early 80s. So you know, we just had.
Amanda Palmer
Your audiences are completely white.
Lenny Henry
Old ones. Yeah, I’m a black person. The audience would be all white people. The white audience in Britain supported me, I would say for the first 20 years of my career wasn’t til I was really up to my waist in the waters of show business that black people started to go ‘oh we should go to Lenny Henry. They were very hands off with me for quite a long time, the black audience, and I’ve got no idea why. It could be because I was at a minstrel show for five years. Doing these clubs where it was mainly white people, there’d be no dressing room or toilet facilities backstage, so I’d have to walk through the audience and use the bathroom in the main auditorium and I’d sit there in the cubicle, and I just be running the show in my head. Oh, come on and do that bit do Mohammed Ali then okay, go into that bit. And then I’ll hear people say, what time is that? What time is the walk coming on? What time is the qun coming on? Somebody would say, oh, about nine o’clock. “He better be funny or we’ll string him up in the car park.” I’d hear shit like that. And comedians would go on before me, and they’d be quite bitter that I was top of the bill. So they’d tell the filthiest joke they could tell before I went on stage, just to screw up the audience for me. I was doing very, I walked into a bar. I said ouch. because they knew that I could. I wasn’t doing. I was doing very. I walked into a bar. I said out It was an iron bar. I was doing jokes like that. I was really terrible. A skeleton walks into a pub and said, can I have a pint of bitter and a mop? You know, I was doing jokes like that. So I was a kid. But these guys were adults. And what I noticed with adult performers, is that they didn’t like anybody being successful. And what they were trying to do is to pull you down. And I had to deal with for a good five or six years it was awful. And I remember coming home and I was in tears once. And my mom said “what’s the matter with you? (Cry cry) It was horrible and then they didn’t laugh. It was awful. Mom said, you wanted this life! This is your fault. You chose to do this. If you want to be funny. Go to Wolverhampton find jokes which was like go to Poughkeepsie, find jokes, you know, go to somewhere in the Midwest, and there’s jokes just lying in the street and pick them up. And in a way, what she was saying was, this is the life you’ve chosen. When you were a kid, you just went out with your friends and you came back. And you surprise me with all these jokes. You’ve got to start doing it again, keep doing your research. Because whatever you did to get into this career, is what you’ve got to do to keep it. She was right. Keep going up, keep getting up. Don’t just let them knock you down. Because I’d been bullied at school and all that kind of stuff. And it’s very easy when you’re being bullied, to just give up to curl in a ball and wait for them to stop hitting you. But one day, you’re going to have to get up and face up to it. I just learned both in life and in my career that just because you have one bad night, you got to get up the next night and do it again.
Amanda Palmer
You have great passages in the book about humor as armor as a as a tool with which you could deal with family, deal with bullies, deal with racism. There’s some really great passages in the book where you literally talk about figuring out the strategic tactics of instead of having to get in a fistfight, you can actually use words and humor to twist things around.
Lenny Henry
I think that’s a good thing for kids to know. I mean, you know, if people are beaten down in your everyday you got to figure out some way of protecting yourself. Either learn to fight, learn Kung Fu, or figure out a way to get people on your side. It’s a charm offensive, as much as just a normal offensive offensive. When this kid was beating me up and calling me names, one day, I had an epiphany. I just said, something like, you must really fancy me because you’re always wanted to get me on the floor and roll around with me. Why don’t we just have dinner and a movie first and make the best of it? You know, you could buy me a ring make it official. I started to make jokes. And the people around me, who were white kids, who saw this, who used to go “fight, fight, fight” instead of doing that, they started to laugh. And eventually they said, leave Lenny alone. Lenny’s funny, leave Lenny alone. He’s all right. It’s not a John Hughes film, by the way. I still got beat up. But it started to get less and less until by the time I was in the fifth year, we were the cool kids. And it was great.
Amanda Palmer
Well there is also something about using humor, I think, that when someone’s trying to kind of dehumanize you, it’s almost a way of like reminding them and everyone in the environment that you’re not dehumanizable if you can be funny.
Lenny Henry
Yeah, you’re a human being and the minute they realized I was funny, my life changed. I did Scooby Doo and Top Cat and The Flintstones and all that kind of stuff.
And I hadn’t been doing it because I was I was being bullied and I was shy. And the minute they discovered that I could do the stuff they used to see on TV, they loved that. Here was this black kid who can do all this stuff. Suddenly, I was a unicorn. I had this talent and they wanted to hang out with me. It wasn’t like before, and I use that. I absolutely used everything every time I went to school. Did you see that on television the other night? Did you see XX. Did you see Woody Strode in Spartacus? I’d just come in and dude did you see Planet of the Apes? I’d always have the voice or the attitude or did impersonations of the teachers I sang? I did Elvis, you know, whatever I could do to keep them entertained was the thing I would do because I knew that if I’m keeping them entertained, they’re not picking on me. It was a whole thing.
Amanda Palmer
Working in the trenches of touring clubs, stand up everything and actually Neil and I had some really interesting chats about a lot of this background because I had to be educated, can you explain to me any side of the black and white minstrel show because honestly looking trhough the book and knowing that you’re writing this book now, looking at these pictures of you, in black face –
Lenny Henry
Yeah. And also knowing that while you’re sitting there writing this book, you’re having to contend with the history and the weight of history and what it all means, can you explain it?
Lenny Henry
Like sort of 18th century into the 19th century, there’s this thing called minstrelsy. And what it is, is a show where white people put black makeup on their face — shoe polish or Negro number two — until they work. They have it on their hand. They wear white gloves, and they have blackface and they exaggerate the features of a black person. So they’d have really big white lips and really big white eyes. And there were there was a kind of a show that you could do in a tent. And there were two characters called Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones, and they were basically the compares of the show. And they would have doubled talk, and they would introduce the acts that were on and it’d be kind of they’ll be tambourines and banjos and they’d sing these songs – (singing) “on the Mississippi on the Mississippi where their boats are rolling along.” And there’d be these songs written by Stephen Foster mostly, but gemini songs about the South. And these shows traveled all over the South and sometimes in the North, and they make quite a bit of money. But it was about white people imitating and exaggerating the features and the movement of, I guess you could call it late slavery. So they were emulating and making fun of slaves. And then there was a turning point in the 19th century beginning of the 20th century where black artists started to do it too, because it was a form of income. If you’re a singer or dancer, you want to make money. Actually, a viable thing would be to be in a minstrel show. So there were black artists who did minstrel shows too there was a guy called Burt Williams, that Neil and I are crazy about, who WC fields said, was the funniest man he’d ever seen and the saddest man he’d ever met. And Bert Williams wore blackface and white gloves to perform — think about comedy latte or Charlie Chaplin, the bowler hat and the mustache or Laurel and Hardy, the two different hats. For him it was like a uniform of work. This is this is what, when I go to work to do my comedy, I wear the mask of blackface and the white gloves, because this is why I’m on stage. But everybody in the NACCP and his friends, when it became time to start saying, we’re not going to do this anymore, said, but you can’t do that anymore. And he actually said, no no this is who I am. And they just said, you don’t have to. You’re a funny guy. You don’t need it. And he insisted that he did need him. And he died in a very sad way. So cut to Britain in the end of the 50s. And this guy called George Mitchell has a radio show called the George Mitchell minstrels, and on the radio, it’s fine to have a minstrel show because you can’t see it. But in the transition between radio and TV, they decided that they were going to have people blacked up in the white gloves with the black face and the curly wigs that curly, little semi-Afro wigs and the sparkly hats, and they would do a minstrel show on television. Boom. It goes on TV and it won a huge award. It won the Golden Golden Rose of Montreux and then a couple of years later it won it again, and it became a staple of family entertainment on TV. Nobody said, ssn’t it weird that they’re all blacked up? Nobody said that, that they’re not real black people. Nobody said that. It just became this show that was unlike The Lucy Show.
It was on every Saturday. And everybody watched it as a black family, our family watched it. We had that Scooby Doo (URR?) look on our faces when we were watching it. But we did watch it because it was always on every Saturday night. And then sometime in the late 70s. After I’d won new faces, which is a talent show that I was on. I was asked to be in it. And I did it. I did an appearance on it. And it was I remember thinking this is really weird. What am I doing in this show? And I was also in the stage show and I did the stage show for five years, because the guy that managed me also ran the, he was an entrepreneur who had minstrel shows all over Britain. And he said to me, this is a place where you can learn your trade. Nobody’s there to see you as a comedian. They’re there just to see the nice costumes and to hear the pretty songs from the Great American Songbook. And that was my life for five years. I hit this slough of despond. This depression for five years where I just thought, I’ve really messed up. Here I am 16 years old, and I’ve won this show. And I’ve been seen by 16 million people, all of whom think I’m talented. And now I’m in a mystery show in my own family won’t come and see me. And It took a bit of getting out of, but in 1979 I was able to go to this guy and say, I don’t want to do the show anymore. I think it’s racist, and I shouldn’t be in it. And he said, okay, I thought you were going to say this and let’s say we’re not gonna do any more. And that was it. And it was like having a huge boulder released on my shoulders. It was a massive thing. I just thought, I wish I’d had my brother Seymour is quite militant. Just think Sly Stone, quite militant, and black power. I wish he’d come and rescue me, but he didn’t. I think because as a working class family of Jamaicans, everybody just thought: “This is Len’s career now, we’re just going to be hands off. We’re not gonna, we’re not going to interfere. But they absolutely could have interfered because I was a child. I was 15 16, 17.
Amanda Palmer
This is another one of the things that I see us having in common. When I look back at my early career, I meant there was just no handbook, no rulebook and also back then like no Internet, and even if there had been like there’s no place on the Internet that explains to you in your early 20s here’s how to tour. Here’s how to get on a stage.
Lenny Henry
It says to avoid weird people! Not do that thing that they’re telling you to do.
Amanda Palmer
It’s so confusing and especially when you come from a family who has no idea what the actual job entails, and no idea what anything means. They’re just sort of dumbfounded by the fact that you’ve gone off to this other planet.
Lenny Henry
Yeah and remember, rock and roll and TV was a thing that happened over there with those guys. It didn’t happen to you. So the minute I was in it, they just took a step back and went, well, this is what you wanted. We’re going to just let you explore. So every situation I was in, it was like I was being thrown into the deep end with big weights on my ankles. There wasn’t, in the first 10 years, there wasn’t a moment where I thought, oh, I can handle this. It was all the thing of I’m not handling this. I’m not handling this.
You know, that was my whole experience of being in show business. And so everything, every laugh gained, was a triumph. Every month where the audience went, actually, that’s quite good was a triumph.
Amanda Palmer
And relief.
Lenny Henry
I didn’t underestimate any of it. There’s a place in Britain called the Northeast, Newcastle Sunderland Gates Head. the audiences here were tough. tough, tough. If you got a laugh out of these people, you are doing okay. And I literally barely escaped with my life. Every time I went up to the northeast, I barely escaped with my life, because I just didn’t cut it. I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t have the thing. It wasn’t until the early 80s when I was doing a bit more TV that they started to understand, oh, he’s that guy does the characters. And when I went back and started to do characters, and I was doing the impressions and the music and everything, they got it and suddenly I was getting standing ovations. He’s the guy that does the impressions like Eddie Murphy. He’s that kid. He’s the British kid who does the thing, you know, suddenly I was that guy, because they’ve seen it on TV. TV is a big thing. If you have anything on TV where the audience can get you, and there’s a consensus that you’re good, certainly that’s that’s that’s a thing. Whereas if you’re just out there doing stuff with no TV support, that’s tough.
Amanda Palmer
By total coincidence I also just finished another entertainer performer memoir because it floated into my life and I knew nothing about her and it was Demi Moore’s
Memoir.
Lenny Henry
Really?
Amanda Palmer
Which also came out right when yours did.
Lenny Henry
Is it good?
Amanda Palmer
Eh. It’s not bad but it’s also especially reading your books back to back, it was remarkable to me when I read her memoir and then even more remarkable when I read yours right on the back of it. She doesn’t really talk at all about the craft. Like she talks a lot about this happened, this happened this relationship this and she talks about her upbringing and her family and an addiction and stuff, but you’re 300 pages in and you’re like, ‘wait a second, like, you’ve been in a lot of films.
Lenny Henry
Quite a good actor.
Amanda Palmer
And you haven’t really talked about that, what it what you do, how you have to be, how you have to prepare, what it’s like, what you do when you fuck up like, it’s a job. And if anything like your book goes in the other direction, you talk a lot about like the job and what the places where you do the job.
Lenny Henry
Well that’s the distraction. Remember, remember this plate spinning going on here? I had to go through a lot of heart searching. And you’re very honest, I’ve seen you on stage and stuff and you put it all out there. It’s taken me a long time to go, Len you can talk about these things. It’s all right. Nobody’s gonna kill you if you express an opinion.
Amanda Palmer
They might stop talking to you though.
Lenny Henry
Well you know, it’s tricky. You know you get slagged off in the press if you come out with an opinion, but when I was writing the book, I had a really great editor called Walter. He used to be a commissioning editor at Channel Four who just said, you got to leave something on the page here. You can’t just do a shallow hey, here’s a how to be comedy guy, book Lenny’s Guide to life with lots of jokes and stuff.
He just said, this is a serious thing. If you want to be taken seriously, you better stare at the typewriter and bleed. And so I decided to do that. And the thing about work is to me, the work is the structure that gets you through this. You know, you can get through emotional hang ups, you can get through your mom dying, your dad dying, you know you can get through moments of not being able to have a kid, suddenly having a kid. Because what happens is the work balances it out and for us, the work is structure. So I, I venerate the work probably too much. And the real life is the problem. The real life of all of those things I just talked about. Having depressions, having moments where you you’re not confident, having moments where you’re being bullied in the press or whatever. That’s the stuff that I find tough and I have to be very strong to deal with. Because it’s hard to be out here with your head above the parapet, especially if you’re black and you care about things like diversity, and you speak up about it. People don’t like it if you speak up. You know, why are you speaking up? Who gave you the right to speak up? You got go well I’m speaking up because nobody else’s. And that’s that’s the thing.
Amanda Palmer
Elizabeth Gilbert, I saw her talking about writing a memoir once and she said this great thing, which is anyone writing memoir nonfiction autobiography, is waiting for someone to die.
And it’s funny, except that it’s fucking not because it’s true. I couldn’t read your book without thinking about what it was that he needed to not talk about. You really do go deep into your family. I found myself sitting there with you like shaking and holding your hand …
Lenny Henry
My big thing with my sibs is that I had to send them all the manuscript and say, look, you guys got to read this and if there’s anything that upsets you.
Amanda Palmer
To give them a chance?
Lenny Henry
Oh year. Fair warning. You need to, people had a problem, you know with things but think about mom’s story. My mom’s story. She came here in the 50s you know, she was walking the streets with signs that said “No blacks. No Irish. No dogs.”
She was being racially abused as she walked down the street. ‘57 it’s an eyeblink away. 1957. It’s not very long ago. “Keep Britain white” graffiti on the walls everywhere she went. It was tough for her when she came here. And she was on her own. And she fell in love with somebody. And I’m the result of that. And it was a big family secret. Nobody talked about it. And I didn’t find out about my biological father being different from the father that raised me till I was about 12. Suddenly, it was this thing that my mom thought, Oh, you should meet this guy and you should know him. I tell this story in the book. And my sister Bev was uncomfortable with it. She’s my older sister. And she said, this is mom’s story. And I think if mom was here, she wouldn’t want it to be out there. And I said, actually, mom is not here anymore. And I’m 60. And I want to tell the story, because it’s important that there’s nothing salacious or lascivious attached to it. It’s just, it’s an immigrant story. It’s not just to kind of she fell in love when she got to Britain. It’s an immigrant story. This happens to lots of people. And so I wanted to put it out there that my mom didn’t do anything wrong, because I grew up feeling that there was some kind of wrongdoing around me. And I felt guilty about that. And I couldn’t talk to people about it. My younger brother and sister, Paul and Sharon, were also fathered by this guy, Bertie. And we grew up in a household where to have any conversation about it when we’re kids was off limits. We couldn’t talk about it. We just have to accept that our dad Winston who was raising us was being quite stoic and quite close mouthed about it. And we weren’t allowed to say, what’s it like, you know, we weren’t allowed to have that conversation with him. And literally, I got to be 16 I just thought, I’m going to tell this story. It’s time for the story to be out there. And to stop feeling guilty about it, to stop feeling the burden of carrying it. And it’s been a relief. It’s hard to do. Are there songs that you sing that are so intimate and personal that it affects your throat? It affects your instrument.
Amanda Palmer
Do you know the show that I’m touring right now and what I do in it?
Lenny Henry
Is this about abortion?
Amanda Palmer
Yeah.
Lenny Henry
Damn!
Amanda Palmer
So I get on stage every night and I tell the story of having three different abortions and a miscarriage.
Lenny Henry
Oh my God.
Amanda Palmer
It’s really funny.
Lenny Henry
Could I see that show?
Amanda Palmer
You’ll have to come to Australia or I’ll have to come back to London or you’ll see it in New York.
Lenny Henry
We’ll talk
Amanda Palmer
We’ll talk
Lenny Henry
but it’s real difficult to put those things out there.
Amanda Palmer
I made this record with these songs on it and then saw what was happening politically in America, and felt this painful and annoying calling to actually go tell these stories on stage. And I didn’t realize when I started this tour, that it was going to be funny, that I just knew that I wanted to get up and cushion these songs in the truth of the experience, which is I’m also going to get on stage and tell you what it feels like to go through an abortion and get through a miscarriage. And I and I actually found that it was impossible to talk about this stuff without like heaping doses of humor. I just couldn’t.
Lenny Henry
But that’s, that’s proper storytelling, though. Because if you’re going to deal with the darkest, saddest moments of your life, you’ve got to leven it with something. Otherwise people are just thinking, who is this miserable person depressing me. I didn’t pay 10 pounds for this or whatever it is. People want to know that you have a perspective. They want to know that they’re going to enjoy it. And they also want to learn something, they want to come out of it and go, Wow, what a night. I’ve been entertained, but I’ve also learned a great deal about this person. And I’ve cried too, it’s made me sad. And what I’ve noticed with this show, about my parents and their screw ups, and about being part of that screw up, I’ve learned that the, the abandoning of guilt and shame is something that people need. And people have been crying and leaning forward and really listening. And they’ve been laughing and crying and smiling at me and willing me to tell the story because they too, whoever they are, want to feel that they’ve been lightened, their load has been lightened,
Amanda Palmer
Liberated. The thing that I have found really important about this tour, but also this tour in this moment of history is that things have changed. People will now talk about shit in a way that they wouldn’t even 10, 20 years ago. It seems like it is more acceptable to explore the human dark themes in your work without freaking people out.
Lenny Henry
Yeah, I think I felt that I felt that if you’re prepared to empty yourself out onto the page or onto the mic, and you make a body of work, where you feel like you’ve dealt honestly with the situation, when you go out in front of people with the work, they are ready, they are ready to listen. And they may not have had this from you before. But what I found is because the book is like the basis of the tour, when you go out to tell the stories, they sit there and there, you can see them bracing themselves. This isn’t going to be the normal Lenny Henry show. This is going to be this new show where he talks about this and same with you or this is the show so which talks about that stuff. Suddenly you’re in a place where there’s a crucible of allowing. They’re going to allow you, and they’re going to be with you on the journey, and you’re not on your own. There’s 500 or 1000 or 2000 people they’re going with you and don’t worry. When you’re when your mouth goes dry or when your throat starts to seize up, because you’re the terrible thing that happened to you. I’m talking about Bertie, who’s my birth father. Suddenly, I could feel my throat tensing. But I’d looked at the audience and you’d see people just leaning with these wide open eyes, willing me to tell the story. And when you’ve got that, that’s something, that’s something and they’d come and say afterwards, you know, that’s my story. And that’s what I’ve been hearing a lot. That’s my story. You’re talking about me. It’s some guy, it’s some white guy saying that’s my mom. That’s I didn’t know who my father was and suddenly they know. Suddenly they, they feel something. And that’s all we want, isn’t it? We just want them to feel what we feel. And with the book, it was a hard thing to write and I would send drafts of chapters to Neil and he would just go, just pour it out. Just let it all out. Let it all hang out. And my editor said the same thing. So at least two people saying 60s axioms to me. “Let it all hang out, kid.”
Lenny Henry
When I vomited, basically it was like I was being made to vomit this stuff out.
Amanda Palmer
You also made a really interesting creative decision and a few points, really difficult and emotional points, in the book. The story is told through comic form.
Lenny Henry
Yes. Well, because I’ve been reading comics since I was nine. The first time I read Marvel Comics, for color comics, was when my auntie Pearl, I was going on a long journey, which is like nine miles, to us now that’s not very far, but when you’re a kid that’s like Homer’s Odyssey and my antie Pearl gave me Thor, the Fantastic Four, Spider Man, Iron Man. There were comics called Smash Pow, Wham, Fantastic and Terrific. And I read them on the entire journey in the back of the car. Bear in mind, in the back of a Jamaican car, both adults in the front seats are smoking continuously. And you’re not allowed to have the windows down in case somebody catches a chill. So basically, these children are sitting in this car…
Amanda Palmer
Dying.
Lenny Henry
Beneath a pall of secondary smoke. And you couldn’t say anything. You just basically be, you know, I’m black, but I’m being green. I’m CeeLo Green in the back of a car, choking on your parents smoke. And the only thing that saved me on this journey was reading these comics.
And I was fascinated by this idea of storytelling through pictures and I thought, yeah, this is, this is a good thing. Too many words is too confusing. I don’t feel this now. But actually, when you put the words and the pictures together, it’s a glorious meld of story delivery. And I loved it. And so I’m 60 I still read comics. I’m still reading, you know, Watchmen, Sandman, I still read all of those things. I’m a fan of Brian Michael Bendis now. Mark Miller, all those guys. And for me, there was there was always going to be graphic storytelling in this book, always. Because it’s another way of looking at things. And you know, when you’ve been reading 15 pages of prose, suddenly to flip it, and I’ve Marked Buckingham’s brilliant cartoons of my mom and me when I was a little kid.
Amanda Palmer
The combination is amazing, because you’re just you’re reading everything from your perspective. And then all of a sudden, you see your face, and like you’re terrified face.
Lenny Henry
Yeah. So you get all of those things.
Amanda Palmer
Your crying face.
Lenny Henry
Yeah. And you get those reactions. And it’s not just description. You see it. I tell the whole story about Bertie being my birth father is told in graphic novel form, and I wanted it because it was too hard to write in prose. I didn’t want to sit down and go and then I did this and then I… I wanted to have a lighter load in telling that story cause it was too difficult. And so Bucky just said, let me do let me do that. So I wrote a script for him. And he wrote the whole thing and it’s lovely. We did more, but we couldn’t get it all in the book. We did we did more storytelling like that, but it was, the editor deemed it inappropriate. It might come out in another form.
Amanda Palmer
It was a really beautiful choice.
Lenny Henry
Thank you.
Amanda Palmer
I got to the end of that story, because you don’t tell the story about Bertie in order. You wait till you’re a ways into the book to reverse course and tell that story.
Lenny Henry
Yeah.
Amanda Palmer
And I found myself getting to the end of the comic bit and thinking what’s he gonna say? Is he is he gonna tell me how he feels? Your narrator in the comic is saying it felt like my life was flipped by a cosmic spatula.
Lenny Henry
I say that, but it was I was trying to describe what it felt like. But I just thought Bucky can draw this. So I don’t have to go into detail about the inner workings. I didn’t want to bleed onto the page.
Amanda Palmer
Why didn’t want to bleed on the page?
Lenny Henry
Well, because it was so painful. And also I’m remembering stuff, when you’re writing stuff, well you know this, when you write stuff, and it hits you that hard, you got to find a way to navigate through otherwise, you’ll sink, and I didn’t want to sink because I had more book to write. So I just thought I don’t want to get trapped here on this island, rewriting my childhood, I’ve got to find a way to get through this so I can get to the next bit. And interestingly, I was able to say more things as a one-man show performer on stage than I was in the book. And having done the tour now, there are elements of the book that I’d rewrite because I’m brave enough to say it now.
Amanda Palmer
What are they? That was one of my questions.
Lenny Henry
Well I talk about my feelings with regard to Bertie, because when you’re performing it, it’s different to when you’re writing it. I was on stage when I’m acting it out. I’m very, very angry as a young boy, because the grownups kept it a secret from us. And they could have told us, it would have been so easy. If from the minute I was born, my mom had said, oh, by the way, Winston isn’t your birth daddy, he’s the dad that’s raising you. And your biological dad lives down the road and you’ll meet him one day, and he’s a nice guy. If only they’d said that stuff. When you adopt a kid, there’s a choice to make of whether you tell the kid they’re adopted. And we were advised to say straight away that your child Is adopted.
Amanda Palmer
Because you’ve adopted a child.
Lenny Henry
Because we’ve adopted a kid. I don’t have many regrets, but that’s one thing that I do regret is that they didn’t tell me straight away.
Amanda Palmer
There’s so much they don’t tell you.
Lenny Henry
Well parents are weird anyway. I’m 60 I’ve and I’ve tried not to be anything like my parents and maybe that’s the thing you know, parents are kryptonite. You don’t want to be like them, you don’t went them to be raised raised the way were.
Parents are kryptonite. You know they didn’t hug. They didn’t kiss. They didn’t say I love you. I saw my mom and dad arguing for the minute I was born. One of my first things I remember in my cot is watching my mom fight with Winston. I mean fistfights, arguing. I just thought that’s what normal life was like, big rounds, big shouting, and then suddenly cooking and everything’s all right. And then more hours, more arguing. And when I was when I was growing up, I would get hit. I got hit a lot. So I write about that in the book for the first time because I used to do jokes about it. And any black or third world comedian that doesn’t talk about their parents hitting them. Think about Richard Pryor been bitten by one of them ole douchebag pipes. My grandmother used to hit me with a douche bag. You know that kind of stuff.
Go get go get him in that tree so I can beat your ass with it. You know any black comedian that doesn’t do that stuff is not worth their salt. And so I did stuff about my mom hitting me with a frying pan. She hit me so hard the frying pan retained the shape of my face for six months. People would come around to the house, Mrs. Henry I didn’t know you collected art that looks just like Len. You know my mom hitting me with a shoe. My mom threw a chair at me once and I run around the corner upstairs and the chair followed me around the corner. I had all these weird magic realism jokes about being hit. But in the real world, my mom hit me and my mom was bigger than me. She was like six foot. She weighed 200 pounds and when she hit you It hurt. One time she with a belt and the book of the belt caught my — I’ve still got scars — the book of the belt hit me above my eye and I bled for a really long time. And uncle Clifton came round, uncle Clifton! (sobbing) momma hit me and he said good, you won’t do that again, will you? No sympathy, no hook, no nothing. Just that and so this was my life growing up. And I have been criticized for it. I had a black journalist write a big article in the paper, criticize me for perpetuating this, thstereotype of the Third World parent. And the, you know, Jamaican discipline, not all Jamaican parents are like that. But you know what you have to tell your truth. And in my world, I grew up in a house with a bitch licks and claddings and beatings. And if I didn’t say that in the book, I would be doing a disservice to all those people who grew up with the same story. These stories are very true to me. And yeah, I would rewrite them a bit, but you know, next time.
Amanda Palmer
If you could, you could either reverse course and write the book again, now that you’ve toured it and connected with so many people.
Lenny Henry
This is the bravest I’ve ever been, as far as writing is concerned, Neil said oh you’ve been very brave. It didn’t feel brave, but now that I’ve reread it, and I’ve been on tour, I realized that it was almost tantamount to just go YAHHH, like platoon, you know when the guy kneels down and goes Whyyyyyy!! and everything blows up behind him, it was kind of like that. And it wasn’t necessarily burning all the bridges, but it could have been seen as a thing of oh okay, you don’t care anymore. And my sister Sharon did say why don’t you just be really honest and just tell the story properly?
Neil said, when I was doing Danny in the Human Zoo, which is basically my story in a parallel universe. In the first iteration of the story, my character Danny was a musician. He was a talented musician. And everything that happened to Danny was basically stuff that happened to me. But seen through the prism of this other Lenny, who wasn’t a comedian, and Neil’s note was, why is he a comedian and impressionist? Why didn’t he win new faces? Why isn’t he more like you? The producer said the same thing. So after three years of working on the scripts, I had to then go back and make it more like me. But in that first draft of the story, I really didn’t want to tell the real stories about my family, which is a shame. I shouldered and buffered the story. I made it kind of real but not too real. Danny didn’t really know who his birth father was. So that was in the story. I changed the way it happened. I changed lots of things. And when it came out, it got nominated for an award and all that kind of thing. But my sister Shannon said you should have just told the story.
Amanda Palmer
Neil and I have a word for this. We call it the blender setting, like you’ve got a whole spectrum setting zero, setting 10. Neil’s work is way more on level 9/10 spectrum like you put all of the garbage in there, like fingers, eyeballs, mothers, fathers, life.
Lenny Henry
Spiders.
Amanda Palmer
children and like, like, [Whishing noises] and then you get a soup and you have no I mean, it tastes good, but you have no idea what’s in there. And in my work, it’s just like, you look in and you see a whole hand like it’s just I barely blend.
Lenny Henry
I’ve been discovering the last 10 years that the best art is the most truthful and the most painful things to put out there and to put on the page or to record, those are the things that are going to stick with people. They’re not interested in you showing off. They don’t care about how good your voice is. Or how good you are doing an impression of Scoobie Doo. What they want to know is what’s real.
Amanda Palmer
Give me some truth.
Lenny Henry
Give me some truth yeah.
Amanda Palmer
Being with Neil has been really interesting for me because I have had to overcome my own prejudice around fictionalization of truth because my work has gotten more and more and more true, and I’ve sort of like my, my career trajectory has been like, gotta get like, take this mask off, take this costume off. I don’t want to fucking wear this hat or these heels. I just like me me me, you know, but that’s, that’s one choice and one trajectory. There’s another trajectory where you’re like, I know how powerful this mask is, and I know what I can do with you.
Lenny Henry
There’s a reason why masked storytelling is so potent. Everybody projects themselves onto the mask. You’re just watching some guy in a mask turn this this epic story which is ripping your guts out and you’re crying and you don’t even know why. But they’re wearing masks. So there’s no facial expressions. There’s nothing to inflict, or infer or anything. You just going
(crying noises) and then she turned him into a swan. You’re just watching the story. And I think that there’s a there’s a, there’s a real choice because sometimes being really truthful, and putting it out there can mean that you’re just wanting to burn everything down. And actually, it might be that you have to protect yourself, because you got to live with this. This is a piece of work. Was it David Crosby said to Joni Mitchell, Joni leave something, leave something behind? Do you have to tell everything?
Amanda Palmer
Yeah.
Lenny Henry
Yeah, but who’s that for though?
Amanda Palmer
Right. Well, who’s that for?
Lenny Henry
The question is who’s that for?
Amanda Palmer
The answer is yes to everything. You just have to understand that this is the spectrum is real. And on this side, you’ve got moments where you look at someone and you say, this is what happened. This is really what it was. And then there’s moments where it’s opera flying, which is your costumes. You’ve got to be able to accept that it’s all true,
Lenny Henry
Very much true. But I think it’s difficult if you’ve got family. If you want to be able to talk to your family and your friends over again, there has to be some kind of.
Amanda Palmer
Go get the witch costume quick? Your family’s coming!
Lenny Henry
That’s what fiction is so great.
Amanda Palmer
Because for a lot of people, it’s the only way through.
Lenny Henry
If you can tell a story in a fictional way, you could talk about anything. You might get: “that story you told about the guy having the affair with this, isn’t that you? No no no, it’s just fiction, nothing to see here. I’m just telling a story. That’s not me at all.
Amanda Palmer
I live with that guy.
Lenny Henry
Yeah fiction’s great.
Amanda Palmer
It’s pretty sexy, though. I mean when you can do it well. If you’re looking for the Lenny Henry mantra, there’s this great line somewhere towards the beginning of the book where you’re talking about being bullied. And you said, I don’t want to get hurt, and I don’t want to hurt anybody. I want to find the safe space where like, I’m just not going to have to fight.
Lenny Henry
Because it’s boring. Fighting is boring, and it’s tiring. If every day is a fight, what’s everyday for?
Amanda Palmer
You also at the end of the book, talk about wondering if you fought enough.
Lenny Henry
I think that’s a question. If I had to walk across a bridge and I’d seen the dogs I’m not sure I’d have been there very long. I think I would have been running in the opposite direction. I’ve only become braver later on in my life. As a kid growing up, I was just trying not to upset or hurt anybody. You know, this is a show business, we’re always taught by grownups, there’s no politics on stage, lad. If you want to do political stuff, you keep that to yourself, you know, your politics is your politics, you’re on stage to entertain. And what I’ve learned recently is that everything is a political act. The act of not doing politics on stage is a political act. You know, because when you’re sitting there watching somebody just doing a brilliant thing with with the linking rings or whatever, that’s, they’ve made a choice to do that. What are they thinking? What’s the what’s the real story? And I just thought, as I was growing up, you know I couldn’t physically fight because I didn’t have, I didn’t have a father figure saying “come on, Chip. Let’s go in the yard and put on the gloves and I’ll teach you how to do an uppercut and the right cross.” Nobody did that for me. I literally had to wait until I was 40 before I learned karate or learned boxing or something. I’m crazy because I remember that at the airport in Glasgow, paparazzi we’re trying to take a picture of my daughter and I went ‘Rrrrrroar” like a lion and came at them and said how dare you and blah, blah. I knew that I had to protect her. So I’ve got that in me. I just haven’t got that violent kick ass badassary thing that other people have, like you have. Like you have. I haven’t got that.
Amanda Palmer
I don’t fight.
Lenny Henry
Really Amanda?
Amanda Palmer
Not in that way! I mean, this is what has been getting me in trouble lately is I am getting you, I have a Kumbaya reputation, forgiveness and compassion, radical compassion for everybody that makes a lot of sense to me, but is not very popular nowadays.
Lenny Henry
I don’t like confrontation at all. My sister K is a badass. She would show up at school and if I was being bullied, she went, when she was around, she would step in and tell everybody to back off because that’s my brother and if anybody touches him, they’ve got to deal with me! My sister K was like Supergirl, but without the cape, and with Afro puffs. She was fantastic. And I owe a great deal to her because she stopped people kicking my butt when I was at school, but when you’re on your own and you’re being picked on, that stuff is real. You know when a skinhead is having a go at you and calling you names, you got to find a way to get out of that and my way was humor. Humor was my shield and my sword. And once I knew I could deploy jokes and impressions and characters, I might get hit, but it started to get less and less because people just knew me as the funny guy. Oh, he’s the funny guy. And I’m still being chased out of clubs. I was still being picked on.
If you dance with the wrong girl in a club, you could still get beaten up, but generally, I had a smart mouth, people had to learn to deal with that.
Amanda Palmer
I reached out to my patrons to ask if they had anything to put forthview in this interview and a few people asked what your take on cancel culture is? The idea that when somebody does something wrong there is now a button we’ve seen it with like this entertainer this person whatever that someone can just be canceled. Like you are done.
Lenny Henry
Wow! That’s harsh.
Amanda Palmer
You’re done we’re not going to give you anymore airtime ever because you’ve just crossed the line and you have been deemed completely bad. And I have to say one of the fascinating things about reading your book and like flipping back tot he beginning and looking at the exact publishing date is like all of the stuff about Bill Cosby, who’s like clearly influence on you, gazillions of other comedians affected everybody’s life?
Lenny Henry
What’s interesting about all of this is separating art from the person. Gauguin was, you know, to all intents and purposes, grooming young girls … with prostitutes. Bill Cosby. Lots of people I know, who I really admire, have had dark nights of the soul, where they’ve been in a place where, you know, we’re talking about somebody the other day, my partner and I about somebody who was a crack addict and was caught on camera doing it. And yet, eight, nine years later they got their career back. Cancel culture is a reaction that corporations purely have to do to deal with the problem in the now. But that doesn’t mean that person just disappears. That person still has a life, that person is still that person. And what are they going to do? Will they just give up? Will they just throw themselves off a high building? Or will they wait? Very interesting that Harvey Weinstein is trying to fight back with money? If I if I make $25 million dollars available, maybe they’ll go away? Well, maybe they won’t know Harvey. Bill Cosby is still maintaining his innocence and fighting in jail, fighting back. It’s all bullshit. It’s not true. That’s his prerogative because he’s been found to be guilty and he’s in jail. My point about canceled culture is it only works if the person agrees to be cancelled. If you don’t agree to be cancelled, then you can carry on in some extent. If you’re a monster, if you’re a murderer or something, maybe not. If you run your mouth off, or you did something that you shouldn’t have done 20 years ago, people have to figure out what the statute of limitations on those things are.
Amanda Palmer
I won’t agree to be canceled. You shouldn’t either. If anyone comes canceling you.
Lenny Henry
Just don’t agree.
Lenny Henry
Well the minstrels thing was a big thing. There was a period in my life where I thought, well, they’re never going to let me work again, because I was in a minstrel show. And they’re just not gonna let me do it. And black people particularly will not want me around them because I was in this show. And what’s been fantastic, is that by the end of the 80s it was almost like there was a blanket forgiveness from the black community. I’d done the Lenny Henry Show and Delbert and Live and Unleashed. And suddenly there was this platform wherein I could speak to the black audience and say, I’m a repository of our stories, come check it out. And suddenly there were there was this there was this new audience that I’d never had before coming to see my shows. And it was like the sun coming out for me. It was great.
Amanda Palmer
Do you think that any and everybody I mean entertainer, performer or otherwise, is worthy of forgiveness and compassion, even if they completely fuck up?
Lenny Henry
Forgiveness is a thing you know? I think the thing to do is to forgive yourself, because you’re the worst critic of yourself. And it’s got to start with nobody can forgive you. Depending on what you did, nobody can forgive you the way you need to forgive yourself. And that’s work. That means going away and being on a mountain and really thinking hard and deep about the way you’ve lived your life and the things you’ve done.
Amanda Palmer
Did you have to go through your own process, like untangling and untying everything that happened in the 70s, regardless of what critics were saying, journalists were saying, public was saying?
Lenny Henry
The first thing you do is you experience it. And then the second time you visit it, you are revisiting it through the eyes of other people, and with some distance. And I’ve only really started to think about it properly, with some distance of where were my mentors? Where were the guardians of my childhood? Where were these people and all this crap was going down? And you know me, I’m not letting a 16 year old kid go into a minstrel show. I’m not letting a 16 year old kid do the working men’s clubs where they’re being called racist names. I’m not going to be, on my watch, that’s not gonna happen.
Amanda Palmer
You finish the book with a section called notes to a young comic and it’s an It is literally you know it’s like an extra 20 pages.
Lenny Henry
The Guardian didn’t like it.
Amanda Palmer
of just I fucking love it and you know why I fucking love it, first of all, you’re just breaking the rules of writing a memoir, which and everyone should fucking break the rules because fuck rules, but also it speaks to the fact that you are doing this more a gift and as generous act.
Lenny Henry
Yeah, because why are you doing it otherwise?
Amanda Palmer
Because you needed it?
Lenny Henry
Yeah. Yeah. And I never had it.
Amanda Palmer
And you never had it and if you understand anything looking through this like you keep seeing that you do untangle it, like you get into your 30s, 40s, 50s and now your 60s and you look back and you’re like, like, there was no one here to tell me that. I was just like flailing in the fucking deep end. And then you turn around and you do it. And you give it.
Lenny Henry
Make sure somebody reads a contract. Even if you don’t know a lawyer, get a lawyer.
Amanda Palmer
And even like, mic technique. I’m like, literally, like we’re on the last five pages of the book. And he’s going into mic technique like this is awesome. I don’t care what the Guardian says you fucking win.
Lenny Henry
Thank you.
Amanda Palmer
And this book is beautiful.
Lenny Henry
Thank you very much. I really appreciate that.
Amanda Palmer
And you’re incredible.
Lenny Henry
Thank you. And thank you for being so honest about your show and about your, your life. Because unless we’re honest, people don’t get it. That thing about being a truthful artist. It’s only just occurring to me in the last 10 years of my life, how valuable that is. How, much we must value the people that choose to do that. Because if we don’t value them, then they’re doing it for nothing. So thank you.
Amanda Palmer
Thank you for everything you’re doing.