Rosebud Live at Riverside Studios - Sir Lenny Henry
Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth
Gyles Brandreth / Plain Jaine Media
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2026
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our guest today is Sir Lenny Henry, the pioneering comedian, entertainer, actor and campaigner, who tells Gyles his story, and it's an impressive one: from the streets of Dudley in the West Midlands, to winning New Faces at only 16 years old, to an acclaimed run as Othello at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Lenny brings his childhood home to life - his mother, a gifted preacher who came to the UK from Jamaica, and whose formidable personality was a huge influence on Lenny. His dads - Winston and Uncle Albert. The "tall food". The park. The mood board on his bedroom wall. This is an evocative, fascinating and very funny edition of Rosebud.
This episode was recorded at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith in London, in front of a live audience, as part of Riverside's 50th birthday celebrations.
Lenny Henry is on tour nationwide, tickets are available here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming to you live from London, this is Giles Brandreuth, with another episode of Rosebud. |
| 0:28.2 | Welcome to another episode of Rosebud. |
| 0:30.2 | And every week I say to you this is a special episode of Rosebud. |
| 0:34.3 | And this one is another very special episode of Rosebud. Oh, by the way, if we've not |
| 0:39.0 | met before, my name is Giles Brandreth. And I am the host of Rosebud, which is a podcast, of which |
| 0:46.4 | there are more, 100 more earlier episodes. So if you enjoy this one, feel free to go back and |
| 0:52.3 | dip into our catalogue. We really have had conversations |
| 0:55.3 | about people's early memories with all sorts of folk. Today, my special guest is somebody who I've |
| 1:02.1 | admired ever since I first saw him on television. I think I saw his very first appearance on TV |
| 1:08.1 | when he popped up on a talent show called New Faces. He was only 16 and he |
| 1:14.1 | won that talent show. This was the young Lenny Henry. Then I got to know him as a very funny man |
| 1:20.9 | on the Lenny Henry show in the 1980s. And later still, I came to admire him hugely as an actor. |
| 1:28.2 | I went to see him in Othello and I've since, well, got to know him a bit, we have occasionally worked together. |
| 1:35.4 | But today we are going to be Rosebud on the road. |
| 1:39.5 | We're travelling to London, to Hammersmith, to the Riverside Studios, which is a fascinating building |
| 1:46.0 | that's seen cinema history, back when it was built, later television history, shows like |
| 1:52.6 | Hancock's Half Hour were made there, later still theatre history. I've appeared there |
| 1:58.0 | myself in a couple of shows. Somebody who has appeared there before is Lenny Henry, |
| 2:02.7 | which is why he was keen to come back to Riverside Studios |
| 2:05.1 | to be part of Riverside Studios' 50th anniversary celebrations. |
| 2:10.1 | So this is a conversation, a Rosebud conversation, |
| 2:12.8 | with me and Sir Lenny Henry and a special audience. |
... |
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