Lenny Henry

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 1989

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is one of Britain's most popular comedians, Lenny Henry. His talent emerged at the age of 16, when he was one of the star turns on New Faces, and he has since gone from strength to strength - appearing in television programmes like TISWAS and Three of a Kind, doing unforgettable imitations as well as creating his own characters.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

He'll be giving Sue Lawley glimpses of these characters as well as talking about his time with the Black and White Minstrels, and his most recent role, as one of the moving forces behind Comic Relief, when he and fellow comedians banded together to raise millions of pounds for the people of Ethiopia and Burkina Faso.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 1989,
0:11.0	and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is one of Britain's most popular comedians. He left school at 16 with the
0:34.3	passable impersonation of Elvis Presley, after which a win on a television
0:38.4	talent show launched him on a career as a stand-up comic. It wasn't until he was in his early 20s that he found his
0:45.2	rightful home among the talented new breed of alternative comedians. One of the
0:50.4	moving spirits behind comic relief, his non-sexist, non-racist brand of humour
0:56.0	is now enjoyed by millions. He's the creator of such national figures as Theophilus P Wildeebeasty, and Delbert Wilkins. He is of course Lenny Henry.
1:06.0	Lenny being discovered on new faces has presumably turned out to be something of a cross you have to bear.
1:11.0	It gets mentioned every time you pop up.
1:13.5	It gets mentioned but I don't actually mind because it was the break of a lifetime I was
1:17.6	working in a factory. I'd done an audition but I'd given up half of ever hearing from
1:21.9	the TV company and then suddenly they contacted me and
1:24.1	suddenly I was on television I had no experience this guy was just saying just treat the
1:28.6	camera like a box of groceries and there I was on television in front of a million
1:32.2	saying hello to my mom.
1:33.0	It was a wonderful experience.
1:35.0	So I'll always be grateful to programs like New Faces and opportunity not.
1:38.0	Mind you, you didn't actually win in the end, did you?
1:41.0	We always say you've won New new faces but you lost to a
1:43.8	certain lady called Marty Kane I'm glad actually because Marty had to go to
	...

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