Sir Lenny Henry

Jamaicans, male and female, fight with their fists.

And often my mum would win.

So I was basically watching my mum beat the crap out of my dad.

And it was two falls, one submission and a knockout.

And I was only little, but I just thought, wow, this is crazy to be living in a household like this.

And I didn't know why they were fighting.

And I didn't find out for ages and ages and ages.

And it turned out that my mum had been precluded from going to America forever.

A few years ago, she was a brilliant preacher, my mum.

She could get up in church and she could preach extempore.

She could just riff on the Bible.

She knew the Bible inside out.

And some church deacons came from the deep south in America, Alabama, I think.

And they saw my mum in a Jamaican church and they went, well, you need to come to America because you could support your family by doing this.

My mum really wanted to go and my dad said no.

Winston said, no, why should I let you go to America, bloody Elvis Presley, bloody Little Richard, bloody Fat Domino, preaching and making all that.

He didn't want her to go.

So he forbade her going, and it made her angry.

And then one day, my Uncle Clifton, who was in the Midlands in the 50s, and he'd been working in a factory, wrote to my mum, and he said this, Dear Winnie,

Come to England.