Actor Lenny Henry on his own scripted drama: I wanted to write something that was real

Lenny Henry is eager to point out that his impressive new film, Danny And The Human Zoo, is only loosely based on his own life.

It is a coming-of-age tale about a Dudley-born black boy, the son of Jamaican immigrants, whose comedic talents propel him into a career in showbiz.

But there is one aspect of the BBC1 film that is definitely not fiction. At a screening of the drama, written by Lenny, who plays young Danny’s (Kascion Franklin) father Samson, he dropped a bombshell.

For just as young Danny discovers Samson is not his biological father, Lenny revealed that Winston, the man he always referred to as dad and who died when the comedian was 19, is not his biological father.

His mum, Winifred, who died in 1998, had an affair – and Lenny has met his biological father. As we talk after the screening, Lenny says he felt it was finally right to tell his story.

“Before, it probably wasn’t the right time,” says Lenny, 56. “This comes from me. I wanted to write something that was real and meant something. 

I also wanted it to be about relationships.

“When you come from migrant people, the problems of leaving your home country and coming to another country are many and complicated and I wanted to write about that.

I hope that comes across,” he adds.

Winston brought up Lenny – who considers him his father– as his own son. “I talk about my mum and dad a lot, and the person I talk about is the person that raised me. I wanted to write about the way we grew up and about our family and what it was like,” Lenny says.

Danny is an exuberant, emotional 90-minute film about how Danny grows up and finds his comedic voice, and particularly how he negotiates a Jamaican family life with growing up British.

Lenny himself was propelled to fame after winning the TV talent contest New Faces in 1975 doing impressions of famous people – but his parents, he says, didn’t always get the humour.

“I was bringing home this very English, clubland-style humour. It was a real clash of tastes and styles,” he says.

By turning Danny into a piece of fiction, Lenny says he was able to right some wrongs from his past and depict events from his life as he wished them to be rather than as they were. For example, he has been very vocal about regretting his early career move into TV’s The Black And White Minstrel Show.

In Danny, young Danny finds an ingenious way out of his contract with the show.

For Lenny, it was cathartic to put a positive spin on his own story. Writing Danny has forced him to deal with difficult issues, yet this is a touching story about a boy’s journey to manhood. It is his most personal script to date and continues his transformation from comedian 

to Renaissance man – Lenny has become a serious dramatic actor, appearing in Shakespeare and BBC1’s The Syndicate, and a writer of note. 

He has also continued his commitment to Comic Relief, which he co-founded with Richard Curtis in 1985 and for which he received his knighthood for charity work and services to drama. His daughter, Billie, family, friends and Comic Relief co-workers were delighted – and told him so.

“It was like being filled with lemonade and shaken very hard,” smiles Lenny. “It was a great feeling.”

Danny and the Human Zoo, Monday, 9PM, BBC1