Sir Lenny Henry

It is such a lovely place and the people are very friendly.

Every day they greet me with a smile and say, welcome.

I'm working in a factory.

I get 30 shillings a week.

That's good money.

And you must come over here and you can earn money and send for everybody else because we've got four brothers and sisters, two brothers, two sisters in Jamaica and bring everybody over and you can support the family because it's good money.

P.S.

Bring me a wife.

And my mum did do that.

She bought him a mail-order bride called Madge, my Auntie Madge, and she came over with my mum and my Auntie Pearl.

Yeah, like during the war, you know.

It's something that happens in Christian communities of finding a suitable woman of the church, and he just said, ask around and see if there's anybody who wants to come to Britain and wants to marry a not particularly good-looking older man.

And Madge said, I'll go to... Because...

The implication was this was escape from Jamaica where people were very, very poor.

And this is the late 1940s?

No, this is the mid-50s.

Mid-50s, OK.

And there's no money in Jamaica.

There was a bauxite boom for a while.

But generally, people were very poor.