Rising to the Surface

Lenny Henry

Having read it

★★★★☆

Took a while to get going, but that may have been because I had just finished Lenny’s first memoir, but get going it eventually did.

Plenty of interesting moments and honest views and reflections about the ups and downs of his comedy and acting efforts; great to hear of the many shared experiences and views from his many collaborators, helpers and guides – that he has always acknowledged and thanked – through his career too.

A good passage

I’ve been told there’s a possibility that I am descended from West Coast African folks. I’m sure I’ll explore my heritage one day. However, my honeymoon [in Kenya, after getting married to Dawn French] was the first time I felt that being plugged into the birthplace of my ancestors was akin to being hooked up to the National Grid: a hugely powerful feeling of being directly interlaced with your roots and original purpose. Mind blowing.

A second good passage

I’d always been into music, from the very earliest days of buying tunes from the bargain box at Graduate Records, up Dudley. They always had a lucky-dip bunch of singles at 10p: ‘You never know, there might be something halfway decent in there.’ There never was!
Music, particularly soul music, was what I loved the most. It’s probably the case with all comedy performers that the thing to which you’ve devoted your life might not be the thing you love best; it might be the thing you do because you can’t do the thing you love best. I was certainly not musically gifted. I couldn’t play an instrument. I could sing a bit, but wasn’t good enough to impersonate someone like Stevie Wonder (Gary Wilmot could do a killer Stevie). Singing impressionists were the gold standard in my eyes. Sammy Davis Jr’s mimicry of Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin was nothing short of miraculous. No recording career for me.