Lenny Henry says racism in UK ‘still at large’ decades after he started standup

Comedian is doing first standup tour in more than 15 years and says many issues he talked about in 1980s are still alive today

Lenny Henry has said racism is “still at large” as he does his first standup tour in more than 15 years.

Henry, best known for The Lenny Henry Show, which ran from 1984 to 2005, said the things he used to talk about in the 1980s are still relevant now.

“The reason the show is called Still At Large isn’t only because I’m still at large, but because things I used to talk about in the 80s are still at large now – like racism, the rise of the far right, the tumult we’re in as a world at the moment,” he told the Sunday Times.

“These are things we have to deal with, and I think it’s all right to talk about these things because I’m 67, so I’m allowed.”

Henry, who was born and raised in Dudley, was six when the Conservative Peter Griffiths won the neighbouring Smethwick seat with the campaign slogan “If you want a [racist slur] for a neighbour, vote Labour”. Four years later, Enoch Powell gave his “rivers of blood” speech in Birmingham. Henry has spoken frequently about the racist abuse he faced when he was younger.

The comic began his career as the winner of TV talent show New Faces in 1975. In 2009, he played Othello in a Yorkshire Playhouse production that toured the UK before transferring to the West End. He said he had continued to do one-off gigs, but gave up touring 16 years ago as he “needed a break”, adding that he found it “exhausting”.

“I’m a massive fan of Billy Connolly, Richard Pryor and Chris Rock, and I feel that as they grew older they became better, because their authenticity came through stronger,” he said.

His tour, which began in May and goes on until on 3 November, received four stars in the Guardian .

The Comic Relief co-founder said the idea to return to the stage came when he was performing shows and realised the audience wanted him to do more off-script audience interaction.

“I got a bit tired of the travelling and I thought I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life, but it turns out I didn’t want to stop it completely,” he said.

“When I did a one-person show I wrote called August In England, and then Every Brilliant Thing, written by Jonny Donahoe, I found that when I was interacting with the audience, they were egging me on to do more outside the script.

“I thought, ‘oh, they want me to do a set again’. So, I started to think two years ago about what that would look like.”

Henry is also known for his appearances on Tiswas and Three Of A Kind, and has long been a passionate advocate for better minority representation in the arts.