Sir Lenny Henry loves our seared scallop & tomato tagliatelle

21:22It's singing to me. Well, hey, it's your career, 50 years. Cheers, Lenny. Cheers, cheers. It's an age. Thank you very much. Cheers, Lenny. I never thought it would last this long. But it's great. Yeah. It wasn't a black. It didn't feel like a black. I certainly feel like I've worked very hard for quite a long time. And the thing of getting good, I don't know how you felt, either of you felt, where you kind of thought, oh, I can do this. How long did that take? It took me about eight years to kind of get to a point where I thought, actually, I can do this. You know, where I'm not going to let the audience down.

21:53Yeah, yeah, sure. Because you have that. I still sometimes have that sometimes. You know, probably how you're feeling now doing the tour again is you always think, God, you know, you want to make sure everything's right, service is right. You must feel it in the morning, so I've got to have a good show. I think whenever you're doing it to an audience or to people paying money, you feel there's a responsibility, I think. A responsibility, yeah. I learned a lot from, I worked with John Burton Race at Lautalon. Oh, wow. And I did a television show called Chef. I saw it. Before I started, I had this thing where we had to help with prep in the morning.

22:27And I'd get there at six o 'clock, he said, be here at six. And he made me chop parsley endlessly. I was just chopping parsley and he was teaching me how to use a knife. And then that stopped and then I had to gut a rabbit. I had to do rabbit. The whole thing was me just gutting it, just horrible. And then there was something else. And then I went in the patisserie and it was all about prep. It was all about you need to, if you're going to do it, you need to get everything ready before. And I'd never done that before. I was the guy who started cooking and then was in Waitrose with a flower handprint on my face because I'd left the meal halfway through cooking.

23:02to get a vital missing ingredient. So it really taught me about prep and about thinking before and the night before. And then the other thing was working with musicians. I had a band called Poor White Trash and the Little Bighorns with Adrian Edmonton on guitar and Hugh Laurie on the keyboards and Ben Elton's Misses on the bass. And we had to play, we were practising I Want You Back. Yeah.

23:31Right? They practiced that. They practiced that for an hour. And they were just practicing it because they were enjoying it. So the bass line is quite difficult, solo playing that. And they kept practicing it over and over. And I don't think I sang in that rehearsal session because they just kept playing, playing, and playing. And as a comedian, I went, oh, these guys really practice it. until they get it right. And comics are kind of like, yeah, I go on and I just do it. And I thought, no, I'm going to start running lines. I'm going to start thinking about the lines and I'm going to prepare it.

24:05So like the cooking, like the working with the band, I thought, no, I'm going to go someplace and just practice my lines over and over again. So when I come on stage, boom, boom, I can just do it without even thinking. So to be able to play a bass line without even thinking it, it's like hours and hours of practice. And I started to apply that to my stand-up. and it was a game changer. If you want to try this recipe at home, all the ingredients are available, of course, on waitrose.com forward slash dish recipes. You'll find the recipe on there. You'll find the wine pairing. You'll find out how to do what Angela has done for us today.

24:41When you got into serious acting, how did that, you know, because obviously you went from comedy into that. What made you do it and why? I just, and I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but I hit a wall. My mum passed away, and then recovering from that took a long time. And I got to the 2000s, and I was doing shows and everything, but I wasn't quite enjoying it like I used to. I felt like I was just doing it. And I was doing TV shows and stuff. I did Mrs. Jones, and I did two... I won a Golden Rose Montrever doing Lenny Henry in pieces. I did a few years of that. And then I just sort of stopped doing it.

25:22I probably would have carried on if they'd asked me. The BBC didn't want any more shows. And I thought, and so I was doing corporate gigs. Hey, it's the Plumber's Weekly Convention Show. I'm your host, Lenny Henry. Here we are. So I did that for a bit. And I wasn't enjoying it. And then I just got to a point where I thought, there's got to be, you know that thing where your ladder is up against a building, metaphorical ladder, and you get to the top of that building and then you look across and you realize, oh, you want to be, on that building over there. And I realized I'd done all this work as a comedian and a comedy actor.

25:57And I thought, well, I want to see if people will take me seriously as a proper actor. So I started to seek and desire that. And Barry Rutter from Northern Broadside came to see me. And I was doing a radio show called What's So Great About? You know, Bob Dylan, The Pogues, Maths, that stuff. And one of the shows was What's So Great About Shakespeare? And Barry Rutter came on the radio to do a kind of insert about why Shakespeare should be done in your own accent. You shouldn't just do it in a posh voice. To be or not to be, that's the question. It could be, to be or not to be, that's the question.

26:31Whether it's just normal or in a mind, you can do it in your own accent, wherever you're from. And it was a game change for me, because I'd always been scared of Shakespeare. You know, because at my school, me and Ronnie Barton were made to read out Romeo and Juliet. It was not pretty. To be, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore are now Romeo? It was just not good. and so I just thought it was a posh people with tights on with a cucumber down their tights I just thought it was for them not for me and then Rutger did oh for a muse of fire down the phone and it was brilliant it made my made the hairs on my arms stand up because he was a bloke who was fully invested in it fully invested in using his normal whole voice and his dad was a fisherman and he just said this is I can do shakes will you blow winds and crack your cheeks I can do that why shouldn't I be able to do that?

27:21And he made me feel like I could do it too. And when he does it, he plays. So he gets up and he moves things around you. You sat here, you've got a knife. You don't know where the knife is. You know it's there. And there's two dead birds on the bed. You've killed them. It's your bloody fault. You believed he, Igo. You shouldn't have believed him, you daft son. Anyway, you sat there and he just axed the whole thing out. Wow. And he just made me, you know, when you were playing as a kid, it was like that. It was like, I'm going to be your fellow in a minute and I'm going to have a knife and I'm going to kill myself.

27:47I've never been so happy. Anyway, that day, that one day of broadcasting house, it just changed my life. I just thought, I want to do that. And then a year later, there I was, walking down the hedgerow, whatever it's called, in Leeds, looking at me with my top off over the West Yorkshire. I looked like a podgy Denzel Washington. And just me looking at myself, Lenny Henry, he was like a fellow, and I went, oh! It was the most exciting thing I've ever done because I just didn't know if it was going to work. It was that thing of you've got to jump. You either stay here and be safe or you jump. And that was my moment to jump.

28:25There were many nights when I would wake up at 4 o 'clock in the morning with a glass of red and my face glued to the script like that with drool. And I'd go, like that, and I'd just carry on, you know. I'd just carry on. I ran the lines and read the script every day all the way through. And even before, I remember going on, just before you went on to the last scene, I'll be up against a pillar waiting to go on we were all doing press ups because we wanted to look hench you do press ups we did them before this I know look at those guns Angela so but before I went on I'd be up against a pillar running the line just making sure you don't do that but I just wanted to be proper on stage and it paid off you know the work pay and what's great is it pays off and you don't have to be nervous as long as you've done the work if you haven't done the work if you're just trying to blag it, it might go wrong halfway through.

29:19To be your... line. You don't want that. You don't want that. You don't want that. What a bad line to forget. Well, you went on to win Best Newcomer Award. At 50? Yeah, come on. So proof it pays off. You might encourage a guy. Yeah, proof it pays off. Yeah, it was lovely to win that. It was a stiff competition too. There's so much we want to talk to you about. Yeah, we've of course got to talk about Comet Relief with you. Woo-hoo! Because this started in 1985, but the very first Red Nose Day was 1988. So we're nearly at 40 years of it. Do you remember those early days when it was starting out?

29:56And did you have any idea that you would be, you know, launching something that would be so powerful and still going four decades later? I was with Richard Curtis today, actually, and we often talk about it. We're both saying it's extraordinary that it's still going, because we didn't think it was going to... We did the show at the Shaspi Theatre, and Richard had just been to Ethiopia because there'd been a terrible famine in there and he just wanted to get a sense of what he could do and everything and then he came back and he said to me will you help me because I knew people I had my own show Lenny Henry show Lenny Lenny Lenny I had that show in the 80s and the Albert Wilkins and Dekus and stuff and people knew who I was and so he said will you help me because people I just write not the 9 o 'clock news nobody knows who I am yet You know, he hadn't done four when he's in a funeral.

30:45So I just wrote with Richard to everybody in showbiz to say, will you do this show? And quite a lot of people, the older guys, didn't want to do it because they thought helping people in the third world was nailing your colours to the master politically. And they didn't want to do anything that would mess up their brand. Image, yeah. But all of us lot said yes. Yeah. Me, Rick, A, Dawn, Jen, Nigel, Cliff Richard. He's not one of us lot, but you know what I mean. Jasper Carrick, Billy Connolly, Victoria Wood. Everybody said, we'll do it. And we did this show at the Shaspery Theatre and it was a stunning success.

31:21And that's where I did, you know, Romeo and Juliet with Frank Bruno. Juliet, Juliet. I haven't seen these since the way in, you know. We did that and we did Theophilus B Wilder Beast and we did all the, and Victoria Wood and Dolinger did Sex Talk. And it was a legendary night. And the young one and Rick came on and said, Do you love me? You know, Rick did that. It was just a brilliant night and we raised about three million. And then we were at my house getting drunk and I said, it should be a night on the telly. We should just do our favorite things. And it should be all night. And so Richard said, hold my beer.

31:59And the next thing you know, Red Nose Day. We've invented a day that didn't exist before. And we did the first one and we raised 15 million quid. So the British public just did that. and they've had our backs for, ever since then, 40 years. That always astounds me when you hear about how much money's raised, you know, because it always can be in a time of crisis and yet the British public always dig deep and go for it. It's incredible. Not just the British public, but everybody who gives their time for free, all the punters, all the DJs, all the MCs, all the, everybody. We did, you know, we did a red hair day and all the hairdressers.

32:35Anybody who's contributed to Comic Relief is a legend because we've now raised nearly£2 billion. It's extraordinary. It's crazy. So I think that as long as it keeps going and as long as the younger turns, the younger comedians and actors take it on, and I think they will, Comic Relief will just keep going. So I'm really proud. It's something I feel very proud of. Oh, God, rightly so. I just remember it being such a highlight of my childhood. The calendar year. And still, I've always something that I'd always watched. I was like, desperate to have a red nose. Like, desperate to have to work to school.

33:08and I was always like too little and it'd be sort of falling off and you'd be walking to school like that so it'd stay on. I loved it and I'd make everyone shut up and watch it. My sister, Jane, always says that I'd always like have it on and I'd sort of do crisps in a bowl because that was a sense of occasion. And then if anyone talked, so they were allowed to talk and I'd be like physically turning their heads to like watch it, watch it. Like my gran's that 80. I'm like watch it. I loved it. I loved it. So I'd be like fighting to stay awake, try and stay up all night. And I'd always fall asleep and then my mum said I'd go to sleep and then wake up and be like, how much to the race?

33:44Like I was obsessed with it. I was obsessed with it. I loved it so much. Oh my God, we've got to talk about Prince. My name is Prince. I love Prince. We have to talk about Prince. Can you tell this brilliant story please? Prince was as sexy as hell. Oh man. Did you ever see Prince end? Yes, I saw him live twice. Oh, what did you see him? Saw him at Wembley Arena. Yes. The smaller gay girl. What was this? Oh, God, hold on. I would have been in secondary school, so between... What? 2010? Yeah, I'm... yeah. What? Sorry, sorry. So I made that clear. You must have been... Wow. I'm really sorry, but you must have seen him do Dirty Mind Tour because that's just recent.

34:23Oh, very sweet. No, I must have... yeah, so secondary school I would have seen him. So that would have been before 90s. How was his entrance when you were at secondary school? Amazing, because he was one of the key players. At the same time you saw Bowie. You know, saw Madonna. And I remember seeing Madonna with my sister, who was seven years younger than me. Bloody hell. And we were right in the front audience and me having to sort of get her out because I thought, oh, my God, she's going to die here because everyone was pushing to the front. Yeah, all of that thing. But Prince was wearing...

34:54No, I remember Purple Rain. And it sort of, like, rained on stage in a weird way. He was so great. Yeah, he was amazing. Although he had his moments, though, didn't he, Prince? There was always... I went to see him at the O2, I saw him at Earl's Court, O2 Wembley. And there was always a moment at a Prince concert when he just decided to improvise some jazz. And that's where he went to get a footlog hot dog. Because Prince can noodle for hours. Suddenly there's a bit of moat start happening. Anybody else want a footlog? Yeah, I want a footlog hot dog. When he starts Raspberry Beret, we'll go back in.

35:30It was just amazing. And there was one where he didn't have a record deal because he hated Warner Brothers because they weren't letting him buy his masters. And he did this one show where it was clearly no set. It was like a ghetto set. He was just wearing, obviously couldn't afford a costume, he was just a white leotard with no pants on. Which was a great show. He was doing dancing, he was playing extended funk workouts. Now I like a bit of a funk workout. So 10 minutes of funk improvisation because Larry Graham from Graham Central Station and Sly and Family Stone was on the bass and it was one of the best nights of my life.

36:05And then, and then, we did Comic Relief, did Top of the Pops. Yeah. And I was the host and they asked me to host Top of the Pops. It was like, oh, the suite coming on. I mean, it was like literally hosting Top of the Pops on my own. And Brit comes on. I didn't know it was on. And it was when he was wearing the, it was when he was wearing the thing over his face. Oh, yeah. I can't remember what the song was, but he was brilliant. And he did it five times. wow this was he did it once and we all went ah and then are we moving on no we're not moving on because Prince wants to do it again he run up to the booth yeah I like that yeah let's do one more and then he come back down and then he do it again and then he let me do that he did it five times it was amazing take that once off they're like whatever let's go yeah take that Robbie's like I'm off down the pub that was it literally once magic just once but it was great watching him work and seeing the precision with which he played and also knew where the cameras were.

37:04He was amazing. I just, he was a real hero of mine and I got to meet him because I did the Lenny Henry show and Shaka Khan was on. Yes. Shaka Khan. And she said, my birthday party on Thursday, having a party. You want to come? And I was like, no, I'm sure, Shaka, you know, I mean, there are things I need to be doing. He said, Prince is coming on. I'm there, I'm there. And it was in this club, right? And it was like, the club was like chlamydia with a bar. and then literally you went in and it was so sticky carpet, you know, horrible. But it was this really funky club and downstairs there were all these black British funk soul divas.

37:44Me, Misha Paris and Karen Wheeler from Soul to Soul and Jackie Graham. And they were all trying to, because Prince was there, and they were all trying to,

37:56and literally Beverly Knight popped along. and Misha Browse went and the ambulance was there in seconds and so I went upstairs because I didn't want to listen to the divas anymore and Prince was sat there and he knew who I was and I said you're Lenny Wright and I went oh my days and luckily I was wearing the tenor pants so I went and sat next to him and we just talked for about an hour and I I can't even remember what we talked about it's like me to the royal family but I literally can't remember what we talked about. But didn't you do, you ended up on a track with him. Yeah, I did. I did, because I was doing Theophilus, P.

38:37Wilderby's he. I did his own comic relief and also on Amnesty and Kate Bush was there both times and she just said, do you want to come and make a record with me? And I was like, and I was a massive fan. Yes. Went to her house and she made me scrambled eggs and we chatted about it and they said, do you want to go in the studio? And I said, yes. And I put the cans on and I heard this, I heard this guitar and this vocal thing. I thought, well, that's Kate. And I heard the guitar and I went, that's Prince. Yeah. And I said, is this Prince? And she went, yeah, it is. Yeah. That's good, isn't it? And I went, is it good?

39:12He wasn't even there and I went myself again. And I had to spit in between her and Prince. It was one of the best days of my life. It was wonderful. Well, Lenny, we've not had time to do the entire life story. But you can experience Lenny Henry still more. It would take years, darling. You can see Lenny on the stage, still at large, on tour across the UK until November time. So make sure you get a ticket. Go see Sir Lenny Henry live. Lenny, are you ready for the fast food quiz? Yes, I'm ready. Okay, it's quick fire. Here we go. Lenny Henry, what is the best way to eat eggs? I think scrambled. But if you're brave, just suck it out.

39:56Never had that before. Just do that. Rocky style. Have you not seen Rocky? Yeah, Rocky style. Six eggs, boom, bang, gone. Throw up when nobody's looking. What's your favourite sandwich, Phil? Well, I like a bacon and egg sandwich. Nice. And I do like tuna mayo, actually, with crunchy red pepper. Oh, yeah. What is your favourite form of potato? I like baking. I like the roasties but I'm a big fan of the fondant potatoes oh cooked in butter and I want to learn how to do that alright if only there was a great teacher around I can teach you what's your favourite herb I like the guy in peaches and herbs he's good he's very very good I love him he's really really good and Parsley the lion I'm a dog called Dill and Dill Dill the dog my name is Dill I'm Dill the dog I'm a dog called Dill I just like that show What is the best crisp in your opinion?

40:53Well, I like really salty, but I'm a secret fan of the roast chicken flavour. Favourite chocolate bar? Well, it used to be Old Jamaica. It still is. Old Jamaica was rum, raisin and chocolate. Nice. And when you're 16, that is the bomb. Of course. I used to eat that all the time and then I'd be on the roof all night. We'd be over the park playing and I'd just be over there like... I'm going goal, I'll play centre forward, I'll do anything. What's your favourite beverage? I was a rum and coke boy and then when I discovered gin and tonic, no contest. That's it. Big, big, big... Goblet. Game of Thrones goblets.

41:29With a dog next to me eating a...

41:35End of the show question. So Lenny Henry, for your chance to win this Waitrose goodie bag here... All you've got to do... What are you giving me a goodie bag for? Yeah, you've got to win the goodie bag. You've got to win the goodie bag. I'm sorry I didn't finish my dinner. All you got to do is answer this question. To win the waitress goodie bag, we want to take a look back at what with you celebrating five decades in entertainment. We want to look back at five decades of kitchen gadgets. Makes sense. We're Dish. Please, with justification, tell us your favorite and least favorite. The gadgets are the Toasty Maker from the 1970s, the Salad Spinner of the 1980s, the George Foreman Grill of the 1990s, 2000s the Nutribullet, 2010s the Air Fryer.

42:26Least favourite and most favourite, please, Lenny. Can I hear the list again, please? Sorry. Yeah, you have the list. That's the list. That's the list. I have no idea about the Toastie Maker. Oh, I love Toastie Maker. Did you like a Toastie Maker? I love Toastie Maker. That would be my Toastie Maker. Lisa keeps going on at me about an Air Fryer. Yeah. Did everybody in the world have a Nutribullet? and then did everybody put it to one side because they had a blender? I was heavily influenced by Nutribullet. I saw the advert one night. I had jet lag and I was in LA and I saw it and I was like, I'm getting that.

42:59Did you still use it? I think it was on the telly. Do I still use it? No. My point is exactly. Do I have one? Yes. I think I have three. We have two. We have two. No. It was going to change our lives. We're going to have a Nutribullet. It's going to be fresh every morning, smoothie, whatever. Blender. We did it once. We've got a blender. What are we having a Nutribullet for? Yeah, we got excited. Even though we haven't got one, the air fryer seems to be changing my entire life. Uncle Len, you've got to get an air fryer. It's brilliant. You put everything in there, including your feet, and it's just...

43:27And you just cook everything in here. The Nutri-Bullet, sort of rubbish. The air fryer, I think, is the future, but I'm resisting it. Okay, there we go, Lenny. Thank you. The goody bag is yours, Lenny. It is yours. Can I say this has been joyous and lovely. Thank you very, very much. A pleasure. And you must do some chicken next time, Angela, because you must season the food. And how do you season the food? You're das, you teen. A round of applause for Sir Lenny Henry, everybody. Thank you, Lenny. Thank you very, very much. Oh, that was so fun. If that episode has left you wanting more, find us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

44:09Just search Dish. If you want to make any of the meals I cook on Dish, head to waitrose.com forward slash dish recipes for all the ingredients and the recipes email your questions thoughts and suggestions to dish at waitrose.co.uk dish from waitrose is a cold glass production waitrose the home of food lovers