Lenny Henry

In Lenny Henry's Danny and the Human Zoo (BBC One), his thinly veiled autobiographical drama of rising as a black comedy star in the 1970s, the last 20 minutes dealt with the self-disgust our hero felt after performing on the same bill as white men in blackface.

Earlier, we saw Danny and his family watching telly in their Dudley home. Like the rest of the TV nation, they giggled at Brucie on The Generation Game and Michael Crawford's Frank Spencer. And then the Black and White Minstrels came on. Smiles switched to open-mouthed disbelief. Just as, you'd suspect, happened in Henry's family living room.

Much of the appeal of Danny and the Human Zoo was the light it cast on its writer, that outlier for black British entertainers, and the compromises he made as a naive teenager in this racist realm. That wasn't how the Queen put it when she knighted Henry in June, but, you'd like to think, it's one of the reasons he was honoured.

In the drama, Danny blew up his showbiz career by coming on the Blackpool stage naked apart from tribal makeup - and telling his audience a few home truths. As security goons chased Danny, looking like a naked Fela Kuti, around the stage, Benny Hill chase music started up. Nice period touch. I wish they'd let that scene run longer.

There was wish fulfilment in this and the denouement in which, having rebelled, Danny returned, tail between his legs, to Dudley. There, Danny (a pitch perfect performance of innocence from Kascion Franklin, if not quite as disarmingly cheeky as the young Lenny was) got the girl (the sweet stand-up black one, not the fair-weather white one) and reunited with his fond but invertebrate white mates, and with his family. "Jamaicans don't have parents," Danny told his mates. "They have drill sergeants lamping them around the house." Really? In the drama, the love that Danny's endearingly firecracker mom (Cecilia Noble played her superbly as hard as nails and brittle as pressed flowers) had for her son looked unconditional.

And then there was Danny's sad British Leyland drone of a Jamaican stepdad, played with masterful restraint by Henry himself. Nice to see him inhabiting previous generations' ground-down shoes so empathetically. For 90 minutes Henry had a face like a wet weekend in Lower Gornal until, very near his and the drama's end, he gave us an unexpected laugh, sounding as lubricious as Lenny Henry's comic character Theophilus P Wildebeest. It was good to hear.

The truth about Henry is probably more painful than Danny and the Human Zoo suggested. Those photos of the young Lenny from the 70s, giggling amiably while flanked by two Black and White Minstrels with whom he was contractually obliged to appear, make difficult viewing in 2015. But white people like me don't get to call Henry on what he did then, nor, quite possibly, should anyone else.

In An Evening with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse (BBC Two), the two comedians had been celebrating 25 years of working together with a clip show of their funniest moments in front of an audience of celebrity admirers, all superbly performed by the two impersonators. It was all going very well until they asked for a question from Lenny Henry. In the audience was Enfield's impersonation of Henry. He awoke in pyjamas under purple bedclothes like the ones from that hotel chain he endorses in the TV ad. Only one problem: Enfield was impersonating Henry in blackface.

"All roight Harry and Paul," said Enfield's Henry in car-crash approximation of a Dudley accent. "Would yow ever consider blacking up?" "That's something we draw the line at," replied Whitehouse with the misdirection that was the show's hallmark, "but we have supported a number of black causes down the years with our biting satirical skits."

They then cut to a sketch in which Enfield and Whitehouse appeared in thick blackface as two putatively Caribbean contestants on Dragons' Den seeking funding for their Me Kyan Believe It Nat Custard. Just possibly, Levi Roots, who got £50,000 from the dragons in 2007 for his Reggae Reggae sauce business (now worth £30m) was in the satirical crosshairs. But the main target was white political correctness - the dragons only invested in the custard so as not to appear racist. Given the history of blacking up and the pain it caused black Britons, dramatised so clearly in Danny and the Human Zoo, that satirical target was attacked with bumbaclot witlessness. White satirists in blackface draw attention overwhelmingly to their insensitivity rather than whatever they were hoping to satirise.

Still, at least the show ended with Enfield and Whitehouse getting pelted with fruit for being racists, homophobes and misogynists.

Again, there was a twist. The people pelting Enfield and Whitehouse were the two men dressed up as their celebrity peers - a fine piece of metacritical self-loathing. As cod-self-flagellatory schtick, it was welcome antidote to this format's usual ceremony of self-luvviedom.

And Lenny Henry? Was he in the angry mob, pelting these two disgusting racists? I didn't see him. He had probably dozed off again. Those hotel beds he gets paid to endorse look really comfortable.

Lenny Henry: I got into fights but I was never bullied

The actor and comedian discusses his parents, his rise to fame and what inspired him to write his new BBC drama, Danny and the Human Zoo.

One-off film inspired by the teenage years of Premier Inn doyen Lenny Henry who - in a meta twist - plays the father of main protagonist Danny Fearon. In 1970s Dudley, the would-be impressionist persuades his strict Jamaican parents to let him pursue a showbiz career, but a family secret and a greedy manager mean that Danny's 15 minutes could soon be over. Warm and poignant with comic touches, this feature-length drama showcases the talents of a multi-racial cast headed up by newcomer Kascion Franklin.

Danny and the Human Zoo, review

This was a satisfying if fictional account of Lenny Henry's life in a troubled decade, says Christopher Howse.

Danny and the Human Zoo, BBC1 - TV review

Forty years after his big break, Lenny Henry shows not a lot has changed on screen.

Review: Danny and the Human Zoo

Lenny Henry's semi-autobiographical drama is an enjoyable Bank Holiday treat.

When Lenny Henry called for greater representation of ethnic minorities on TV did the BBC have to respond by simply giving us more Lenny Henry?

I'm all for seeing a greater mix of races on TV (and a greater range of ages and classes) but must the loud, unbearable Henry be involved? Not only does he star in this drama, but it's based on his life. This, surely, is too much?

Despite my irritation, this fictionalised re-telling of Lenny Henry's childhood in grim 1970s Birmingham, is actually quite good, as long as you can prise it away, in your mind, from the politically correct box-ticking enterprise which probably led to its commissioning.

Henry has described it as "my life in a parallel universe".

The teenage "Lenny Henry" is transformed into Danny Fearon, played by Kascion Franklin, who's an aspiring comedian. A win in a local talent show sets him on the road to success, but he faces racism along the way - it was the 1970s, after all - and he has to struggle against this and assert his real character.

Lenny Henry: boost diversty with ring-fenced funding

Actor and campaigner says improving diversity is not just about getting "another black or Asian person in Coronation Street or EastEnders"

Lenny Henry regrets Black and White Minstrel Show

Sir Lenny Henry has told how he was used as a "political football" early on in his showbiz career. The comedian, 56, appeared on The Black and White Minstrel Show in the 70s after winning New Faces. But he now looks back with horror at his involvement in the programme.