Sir Lenny Henry

So I was going, you know, when I did, I would do a show and then I'd go out and people would see me growing up in public.

I'd make mistakes.

People saw me be terrible.

I was in a minstrel show, for Christ's sakes.

Why?

Why did no grown-up say to the people around that this 16-year-old black kid shouldn't be in a minstrel show?

This you toured?

Yeah, no, no, I toured.

I did, I was in Blackpool, I was in Great Yarmouth with them, I did a club tour, and they were fantastic people, lovely people, but it was just a weird dichotomy to be the only real black kid in a minstrel show, and that hurt me a lot.

And then my mum only came to see me with a Tesco's carrier bag on her head with eyes cut out of it so that nobody recognised her.

But it was tough, that.

But I managed to survive that, and I ended up with Cannon and Ball!

Hooray!

Cannon and Ball, man.

It was great.

And I did that for a bit, 1980, and it was fantastic.

Thank you.

I'm setting a period for it.

A really good moment for me was I was flown to New York by Melvin Bragg to do the South Bank show.

And I've had lots of lovely moments, but this was a big standout for me because we arrived in New York and I was going to perform in front of an audience at a place called Catch a Rising Star, home of performers like Seinfeld and Eddie Murphy, all people like that.