Sir Lenny Henry: Truth telling, support networks, and bad handwriting

Happy Place

Fearne Cotton

Society & Culture, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Relationships, Personal Journals

4.6 • 15.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2023

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you spoken to your parents and grandparents about their own life experiences? For Sir Lenny Henry, it’s been important to document his family’s stories.

In this chat with Fearne, Lenny talks about his community’s culture of overcoming big life events as a collective, explains how his humour won him allies when he was being bullied, and thinks about what still needs to be done to tackle racism in the UK.

You can catch episode one of Three Little Birds on ITVX now, and episode two will be on ITV on Sunday 29 October. Lenny’s latest children’s book, The Boy With Wings: Clash of the Superkids, is out now.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode frankly discusses incidents of racism.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and a big welcome to Happy Place I'm Fern Cotton and today I get to catch up with Sir Lenny Henry.
0:09.4	There are still opposing forces that are saying what are you doing here or no but where you from
0:15.9	from so I think that it's a miracle that we're where we're at because Birmingham
0:20.4	I was in olden yesterday huge influx of black and brown kids in schools everywhere
0:25.8	you go, and in a minute that generation is going to want to know what we did.
0:31.6	What did you do? What did you do to stop that? What did you do to stop that what did you do to change things what did you do
0:36.4	when they said we didn't belong here what were your responses and we're
0:40.8	gonna have to go well we did a bit was in Mandela Day does that count?
0:45.0	Lenny has so many strings to his bow he's an actor comedian singer
0:49.7	TV presenter and writer now he he's written Three Little Birds, a gorgeous TV series for I TV.
0:57.3	Let me set the scene right? It's 1957 post-Windrush and amidst this booming decade alive with promise the rhythm of
1:05.8	rock and roll Hollywood starlets and fabulous fashion three girls board a
1:11.5	cruise ship from Jamaica bound for a new life in Blightie.
1:15.0	It's a completely triumphant celebration of immigration, community and the strength of black womanhood,
1:22.0	and it's inspired by the life-affirming stories of
1:25.4	Lenny's mother some of which you'll hear in this chat as well as all those who've
1:29.7	travelled to make Britain their home. This work is clearly so personal for Lenny and it was a real pleasure to hear more about his own childhood.
1:39.0	We're so grateful now for his humour, but there's oblique a story behind why he turned to comedy.
1:45.0	Oh and by the way if you like ASMR you're going to love the beginning of this chat
1:51.0	because Lenny was enjoying not one but two delicious mouthwatering chocolate
1:57.9	bars at the same time and you can really hear him loving them.
2:02.3	Now a big thanks to the sponsors of this episode, Flora Plant.
	...

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