 | | Berkshire resident Lenny Henry |
Lenny Henry may hail from Dudley in Birmingham but he now lives in Spencers Wood, near Reading, with wife and fellow comedian Dawn French. BBC Radio Berkshire's Richard Skinner chatted with his old pal Lenny about living in Berkshire but primarily about Lenny's Britain, a new series on BBC One (Tuesdays, 9pm) that's teamed up with the Open University to look at our national sense of humour. Listen to the full interview here or read excerpts below: So you've been making documentaries with the Open University, goodness me!"Yes I've done this thing called Lenny's Britain. They approached me late last year and said 'would you like to go out and about among the British public to do this thing about the British national sense of humour'." Do we have one?| "I like the big wind machine on the M4." | | Lenny Henry has fond thoughts of living in Berkshire. |
"I didn't want to do a comedy analysis because somebody said that analysing comedy is like dissecting a live frog: it doesn't look very nice and eventually the subject dies, so I didn't want to do that. "But I just thought, I do love messing about with punters and improvising. "A mate of mine said it's like you're a comedy lab rat and being plunged into various experiments to see how you react to people and to see how they react to you. And thankfully the reaction was pretty much good." And it's on BBC One at 9pm..."It's meant to be entertaining. The star of tonight's (Tuesday 12 June's) show is definitely Doreen who's in this place for the elderly who can look after themselves. "She's in her seventies and has rheumatoid arthritis, and the first thing she said was (in Brummy accent): 'Lenny, have a feel of my leg son, go on get your hand in there, it's the size of a planet. Can yow hear it clicking?' "And then the next thing is: 'have a go on my vibrating bed Len, come and have a lie down'. "She was full of such humour, and here's a woman who's been poorly, she's got rheumatoid arthritis but she's still having a laugh, she tells the filthiest jokes you can imagine and she's got a vibrating bed to boot." You are a Berkshire resident, why did you choose to live in our patch?"It was sort of equidistant between Plymouth and Dudley and London and it just meant that I could see my mum and Dawn could see her mum on a regular basis." Now you live here, how have you found it?"It used to be very difficult finding it but now as a resident, very easily." (Groan)"I sort of like it, I like the big wind machine on the M4. I do hope that it's a propeller and that one day somebody will just press a button, and the whole of the M4 will just go whizzing off towards Bristol." | 
