When Lenny Henry Came To Keele & Ringroad Performed The Warm-Up Act, 29 November 1984

Lenny Henry 1980s (c1985), Photo by Jane McCormick Smith, CC3.0. Did Lenny learn that face from Olu? For sure Olu was using it prior to 1984.

Imagine Taylor Swift having Susan From Accounts as her support act – after all, Susan does go down reasonably well at the open-mic sessions down The Greyhound. Or Oasis being preceded by The Venn Diagrams – that nice band of “sixth-form graduands”, who performed with such exuberant confidence at their end of school bash.

Actually, the idea of Ringroad supporting the Lenny Henry as originally conceived was even more grandiose; the idea being that Ringroad would perform a warm up act and then a warm down act in the main bar that night. I still have the running orders from the project as originally conceived:

That was probably every last scrap of vaguely suitable material Ringroad had to hand at that time. I have some of these sketches in my Ringroad file. Those which I performed and/or in which I had a part, mostly.

I wrote up the preceding week, including the Ringroad context and early rehearsals, here:

We Interrupt This Keele Student’s Union Sabbatical For A Short Visit To London Including A Bagel Hunt And A Heap Of Ringroad Show Rehearsals, 16 to 23 November 1984

Here are my personal diary notes from the few days before and the day itself:

Saturday, 24 November 1984 – shopped etc. Rehearsed Ringroad in afternoon – wrote [H Ackgrass] column in eve – Annalisa [de Mercur] came over for a while.

Sunday, 25 November 1984 – Rose quite late – spent most of day in office. Cooked Petra [Wilson] a meal in eve – stayed.

Monday, 26 November 1984 – Very busy with lots of committee meetings etc. Rehearsed Ringroad in evening.

Tuesday, 27th November 1984 – Lots to do today in office. Rehearsed Ringroad until very late – quite knackered.

Wednesday, 28 November 1984 – Busy day in office. Petra came over to help me learn scripts etc. – stopped.

Thursday, 29 November 1984 – Lots to do today in office. Performed Ringroad at Lenny Henry gig in evening. Got plastered after.

Those notes tell the story in their own way, but I should fill in some gaps.

I’ll write more about that particular H Ackgrass column in a separate piece. Suffice it to say here that I very much remember Annalisa visiting me that afternoon. She was one of “my spies” for H Ackgrass and that will have been the main purpose behind that visit. I recall Annalisa asking me that day, “how do you fit all of these activities in and get so much done?” and I also remember feeling a bit smug about that. Actually, reflecting now on the relatively poor quality of my extra-curricular comedic output at that time, my answer to Annalisa’s question, forty years on, is to admit that I was substituting quantity for quality.

I also recall that I recruited Petra as an H Ackgrass spy the following day, as she was vexed at my caginess about my activities the previous day. It seemed easier and more sensible to recruit an additional Ackgrass spy than to lie about something so trivial so early in our relationship.

I’m going to guess that we didn’t cull the Ringroad show until the day of the show, hence the night before desperation of learning scripts, with Petra’s help. I can’t imagine that it was much fun for either of us, trying to cram my brain with Ringroad lines, while there was so much else swirling around in said brain at that time. But I did have a very good short-term memory back then, it is much diminished in power for such things now.

How and when the decision to cull our Ringroad act from two parts to one was made, I have no idea. Pady Jalali might remember. All I recall is that the decision was hastily made and I don’t suppose for one minute that anyone calculated the length of the resulting show or consider the logistics around our performance being in the Main Bar ahead of a Lenny Henry gig in the Ballroom. Here’s the cobbled together running order for the show Ringroad actually performed.

I don’t think the show went down very well. But my abiding memory is of the most awkward spot I found myself in towards the end of the act. I had just started my “Dracula” solo, when word came across the tannoy (probably the dulcet tones of Wally), that the Ballroom doors were open and that Lenny Henry would be starting in five minutes.

More or less the entire audience, quite understandably, made a bee-line to the Main Bar entrance in the direction of the Ballroom to try and grab good spots to watch the main show.

OK, clever clogs reader, what would you do in those circumstances? Would you admit defeat and stop the Ringroad show in mid sketch, or would you take “the show must go on” approach, continuing to perform the sketch to the ever-shrinking, backs-of-heads audience? I chose the latter, albeit embarrassing, approach. I think the other Ringroad performers and a handful of friends, such as Annalisa and Petra, stuck around…but perhaps I was truly alone by the end of the sketch.

Unquestionably my most embarrassing experience as a performer, ever. More embarrassing even than the sword fight that went wrong in Twelfth Night at school six year’s earlier:

Twelfth Night, Alleyn’s School, 12, 14, 15 & 16 December 1978

But I digress. And you want to read about Lenny Henry, not Ringroad, nor Alleyn’s.

The Lenny Henry Gig At Keele

Securing Lenny Henry at that time was a bit of a coup for Pady, in my opinion. Lenny Henry was on the cusp of real stardom at that time, having just been given his own TV show, which aired in the early autumn, just ahead of his gig at Keele.

Here is the preview story from The Evening Sentinel:

Lenny Henry Preview Sentinel Clip 26 Nov 1984, Mon Evening Sentinel (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England) Newspapers.com

I remember the Ballroom being absolutely packed. I think we Ringroaders watched from a balcony spot; a sole perk for our efforts and blushes. I thought Lenny Henry was an excellent performer and his show had far more in it than I had expected, with songs and set pieces as well as classic stand up material.

Alistair Perkins interviewed Lenny Henry at length for Concourse and also reviewed the show at length. Here are the very pieces that emerged in Concourse ten days or so after the event:

Here is Tim Bevington’s review from The Evening Sentinel:

Henry Review Tim Bevington Sentinel 30 Nov 1984, Fri Evening Sentinel (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England) Newspapers.com

To get a flavour of Lenny Henry back then, you might want to see the first episode of his 1984 TV Show, which is available on The Internet Archive – click here.

Or you might get more of a feel for his 1980s live performance from the following YouTube, which starts with the live material about 7’30” in:

Epilogue

I saw Lenny Henry live a couple of times in 2023. Firstly, in a wonderful one-man-play which he both wrote and performed, August In England, at The Bush Theatre:

August In England by Lenny Henry, Bush Theatre, 6 May 2023

…and then again a few months later when dining with John White in Jikoni:

It’s Not All Black And White: Meet-Ups With Annalisa, Jilly Black & John White, Mid-October 2023

I was far too polite on both of those occasions to get my own back on Lenny – for the embarrassment he inadvertently caused me in 1984 – which I could easily have done, either by walking out of his show or confronting him in front of his friends in the restaurant. I’m far too nice a guy for that. I don’t bear grudges. Anyway, in truth, I had deep filed my memory of that ill-fated Ringroad performance, until going through the old materials brought the memories flooding back.

“Perfection isn’t everything, some mistakes are pretty groovy.”- Lenny Henry.