Top 70 Lenny Henry Quotes

I have a CBE – which I accepted because I knew how much my mum, who made it all possible, would have loved it.

My story is an immigrant story. My story is of people moving from one country thousands of miles away to another and forming new links, new family and new relationships.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor has opened my eyes in many ways.

Black people didn’t start coming to see me until 1982. I’d just started doing Delbert, and suddenly my world changed. I started doing black-centred characters that were about people I knew in the community.

I’ve written songs since the beginning of the 80s.

Shakespeare is for everybody, not just for toffs with a cauliflower down their tights.

It’s about challenging yourself; wanting to do things that push you.

It’s nice to get home and do normal stuff. Put the rubbish out, do the school run – it means you stay grounded. I knew a horn player who was so used to being on the road that he became institutionalised; he could never adjust to being at home. I’m really glad I didn’t let it get that far.

I am the ultimately chippy person, and I am glad I am. I have a chip on each shoulder, so I am well-balanced.

There are comics who choose to be controversial, and people have to make a judgment call. You either watch it or you don’t. It’s possible to be funny about anything, it just depends on how you approach it and if you’ve got good self-editing skills.

My mum was a fixed point in my universe who was never going to grow old or die; she was always going to be there. And when she got sick, I was on the road all the time, I wasn’t at home much, there was a lot of pressure. It was an awful time, and when she died, it was like your world falls apart.

It was weird being a kid in the Midlands where outside everybody is white and speaks in a certain way but when you go home nobody speaks that way and everybody looks like you. Every day was this weird threshold crossing.

Sadness has a horrible way of lingering in your subconscious.

We used to live in a one-room bedsit in Dudley with an Indian family.

If you work all the time, you don’t have many life experiences to feed back into your work.

I’m not sure I like the idea of polar bears under a palm tree.

Britain is multicultural and it will become more multicultural, not less, and you have to think about who is on your team.

When you’re working class and you feel like you’re a bit of a toerag, you think Shakespeare’s not for you, you know?

Corden’s a comedy powerhouse.

Stand-up’s a lottery – you think it’s funny but the audience can disagree.

At school I wasn’t particularly engaged. I was sort of a look-out-the-window guy.

My dad, Winston, didn’t say much. He was a very reluctant man. He came home from working at the foundry every day and then he’d go to the bookies, watch cricket on TV or go to the pub. He was like a Victorian dad, really. He didn’t have much to do with us kids.

It is wrong if how we see women on TV is largely determined by male directors.

My mum was very, very tough.

In our house, my mum was the funny one.

Wouldn’t it be great, if there was a one-stop shop where funny people could take their ideas and have them made?

Comedy is a way of hiding – especially character comedy.

As a performer, you get your ‘thing.’ You’re the deadpan comedian, or the mad one, or the sexy one, and then you rely on that and mine that seam for years and years and you kind of forget who you were. There’s this mask that you hold up between you and the audience that means they never get to see who you really are.

I haven’t got an exact number for my carbon footprint although if it’s anywhere near my normal footprint it’ll be size 13 wide.

I did a TV show called ‘Lenny Henry Dot TV’ a couple of years ago and I hated it. These things always happen when you don’t have time to reflect. And I didn’t do anything on the telly for three years.

My dad never hugged me, never said he was proud of me.

I want people to be safe, I don’t want people to die or end up in hospital because of Covid-19.

With standup, I was thrown into the deep end at a very early age, without being able to swim. Acting was the same.

A relationship can only work if you work at it. Marriage is the most difficult thing you will do – you’ve got to really love each other to enjoy the same jokes, the same odours, the same behaviours every day.

I think it is important that the public record of anyone being considered for key public appointments is scrutinised. That is the role of the media and key public institutions.

I got accused of misrepresenting all people of colour in Great Britain. I would get told off a lot. ‘How can you do African characters when you’re not African?’ But I gave it a go. Maybe if there had been more of us I could have just been Lenny Henry from the Black Country with Jamaican parents.

When you’ve lived in a country for 50 years and you pay your tax, you have a pension and insurance, you’ve raised a family and sent your kids to uni. To get to an age and be told you don’t belong here and you have to go back to where you come from is really saddening and infuriating.

The idea of giving your talent for free in order to save lives seemed like the most sensible thing anyone’s ever suggested.

I wish my dad or somebody had taught me how to fight and defend myself. Because you’re very vulnerable if you can’t stick up for yourself.

It’s not just about showbusiness – everywhere you go people are discriminated against. And if by having an organised voice against inequality and a lack of diversity we might be able to push that down – how brilliant would it be?

I fell asleep during some ballet once.

My upbringing gave me a lot of backbone and prepared me well for showbiz. It could throw anything at me and I could take it.

That’s what all of us, as writers, actors and comedians, set out to do – shine a light on new perspectives.

My family is from Jamaica, it’s why I don’t do ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ because within two or three generations is slavery, and I’d be there two minutes in crying, they’re all slaves! So I don’t want to do ‘Who Do You Think You Are.’ It’s in my family.

I lament the passing of ‘Play for Today,’ ‘Armchair Theatre,’ ‘Screen One and Two’ and ‘Comedy Playhouse’ – because these shows gave a platform to new talent and new writing on primetime television.

In the 1970s in black and Asian households up and down the country, there’s a familiar story that when we saw a non-white person on TV we would call the rest of the family to the sitting room to have a look. The story that is less well known is what it was like to be that one black person on TV.

In 21st-century storytelling all bets are off: anybody can do anything. We’re all storytellers.

I love the BBC but I just want this thing of BAME inclusion in the demographic of the people who make the decisions about what we do and how we do it, to change.

Mum would hit us with anything. You’d see her looking for something to hit you with, and you’d think, please let it be something reasonably soft. She threw a chair at me once. It was like being in a western.

Huge props to Brian Michael Bendis for sort of shaking up the Marvel universe and just saying ‘there need to be people of colour in these comics otherwise it’s not representing the true world the way it should be.’

What a gift it would be if every child in the country could hear a professional orchestra at least once.

Quotas are often about quantity and not quality. I think people should get jobs because they are qualified and they can prove they are good at the job.

No, people don’t heckle me. I think it’s because there’s this big, black guy on stage and it’s slightly daunting.

I’m a black person and when I was growing up I went to a school with no other black people and walked past signs that said ‘Keep Britain White.’

My family recycles paper and bottles, but I reckon a proper wormery for the garden compost would be the way to go.

Depending on who’s directing you, sometime it’s heightened or more naturalistic, but generally you’re trying to represent something truthful.

I listen to a lot of Sade.

I do like a well-written sketch with a bunch of jokes in it, and I like stand-up with good jokes in it it.

I was always uncool. I was always from variety – big bow ties, flared trousers. Never cool.

With every task you think, ‘What did I do wrong there? What could I do better?’ That’s why I’ve spent my life gravitating towards people who can show me how to improve.

I never let myself forget that I’m really lucky in my work to be able to discover so many people and places, and to have the opportunity to bring some of their stories to new audiences.

If you can’t see, you can’t be. If we don’t see BAME people on the TV, or in film, we become invisible.

If I’m going to do comedy I sort of want to do my own.

People want to be represented on television.

The blues has been in my life since I was little.

I think it’s possible for anybody to write what they want to write – superheroes, historical, period drama, ‘Game Of Thrones’ – it’s just how you chuck yourself into it that counts. And do your research.

Now, although I’m a mimic and I’ve got a reasonable ear, being a character isn’t about an ear. It’s about the whole person.