Lenny Henry’s Best Roles

Lenny Henry was one of the founders of Comic Relief, along with writer Richard Curtis, and it’s perhaps what he is most famous for. A response to the famine in Ethiopia at the time, the concept was first launched on BBC1 on Christmas Day 1986, live from a refugee camp in Sudan.

Since then the charity has been working to bring lasting change to poor and disadvantaged people around the world, and Lenny Henry has hosted each of the biannual telethons since their inception, as well as working tirelessly to recruit celebrities and ensure the event goes off without a hitch.

It’s what will undoubtedly be his crowning achievement and has raised more than a billion pounds since it launched, but Lenny Henry has plenty of other career achievements worth mentioning too.

Check out some of Lenny Henry’s best roles below:

Tiswas

Tiswas was a Saturday morning children’s TV show, and was much loved by its viewers, who still feel nostalgia for it to this day. It featured film clips, pop promos and competitions and often spoofed contemporaneous children’s programming, but the most popular part of the programme were the sketches, performed by members of the cast.

Kooky features such as the phantom flan flinger who would periodically make an appearance to throw flan at the audience, the presenters and the cameramen and women ensured it was a hit amongst its young audience, and many remember Lenny Henry’s time as a presenter there fondly.

The Lenny Henry Show

Running for more than 20 years on the BBC, the Lenny Henry Show first aired in 1984 and featured a mixture of impersonations, characters and spoofs. It became a firm family favourite and some of its most popular sketches were Henry’s impersonations of stars including Tina Turner, Michael Jackson and Run DMC.

Neverwhere

Not technically a role for Henry as he was a co-creator and producer, his involvement in the TV series Neverwhere never the less merits a mention. Inspired by the Neil Gaiman novel of the same name, the drama was based on the concept of warring gangs of homeless people in an alternate version of London, called London Below.

Notable London landmarks take on other meanings in the show, for example the Angel Islington is a person (well, angel) and Knightsbridge becomes a place called Night’s Bridge in Neverwhere. The series has become a cult classic and Henry’s involvement became the push that helped the TV series to take off, one of his most interesting and off-brand endeavours.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Although it’s a tiny cameo role, Lenny Henry’s appearance in the Harry Potter series is worth mentioning. The series is a who’s who of British talent and Henry’s ex-wife Dawn French also has a cameo role. Henry plays the part of a very vocal shrunken head on the Knight Bus, a form of wizard transportation.

Broadchurch

Broadchurch has been heralded as one of the best drama series on TV ever since it made its debut in 2013. Last year it was announced that a third and final season would be filmed and aired, and Lenny Henry joined the cast alongside David Tennant’s Alec Hardy and Olivia Coleman’s Ellie Miller.

Henry played the owner of a local farm shop and one of the suspects in the rape case which Wessex police force were investigating. We won’t spill the beans on whether his character did it or not, but Henry himself didn’t even know what was happening until the final few scenes were shot. He said: ““With most TV dramas you know what the entire story is before you start filming but on Broadchurch so many people, including myself, started this without knowing how it ends up.

“There was a real detective vibe going on behind the scenes. We would be in make-up or costume going ‘have you read what happens next? What happens to me?’ ‘Why am I wearing these trousers? Why is there mud on these trousers?’”

Hire a celebrity

Comedian Lenny Henry is a fantastic choice of celebrity guest for any event – especially if you’d like someone with comic timing to compere an event or present awards. If you’re interested in booking Lenny Henry, contact MN2S talent agents. If he’s not quite right for what you’re looking for, there are plenty of other celebrity speakers on the books.

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