His companions were, he says, “vagabonds, mountebanks and felons – constantly moving from town to town, wreaking havoc and then skipping town before daybreak to avoid hostile landlords, one-night stands or irate husbands”. He gets to meet girls, former matinee idols, the sequin-wearing magicians Anna and Maria – and their outsized parrot, Miggsy. Henry’s accounts of touring in a stage version of The Black and White Minstrel Show are finely recalled. I wanted to smash box office records and buy my Mama a house I didn’t want to smash the oppressor, or kill Whitey. Crackerjack presenter Don Maclean “would stalk the stage like a velociraptor – marking out his territory and spraying jokes at each point of the compass … I hero-worshipped him”. So many light entertainers from the 70s have been found guilty of abusing their fame, it’s a relief to read Henry paying tribute to the artistry and friendship of performers such as Bob Monkhouse, Leslie Crowther and Ken Dodd. Why don’t we go and have dinner and a movie first? Cut out all the fighting?”įor a while, the comic stage offered a safe harbour. “You hit me, I hit you – we fall on the ground and hug. “Y’must really fancy me, cos you’re always tryin’ to get to me to roll around on the ground with ya.” “Shut y’mouth, coon.” “Here we go,” Henry replied. “Not this again,” Henry said to one of them. At school there were meatheads who made monkey noises and picked fights. At night he and his three brothers “took it in turns to wet the bed – there were many times when I dreamt I was asleep in a submarine that had just been torpedoed”. At one point he called his home “the Ruins”. Being cheery was a way to stave off the pains of growing up in a working-class household ruled over by a mother who whacked her children with fists, boots, branches, frying pans.

Lenny henry who am i again