Comedian Sir Lenny Henry has said his first stand-up tour in more than 15 years comes as racism is “still at large”.
The 67-year-old, who began his career as the winner of TV talent show New Faces in 1975, said he had continued to do one-off gigs, but gave up touring 16 years ago as he “needed a break”, adding he found it “exhausting”.
Sir Lenny told The Sunday Times: “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.
“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.
“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.”
His tour, which began in May, will see him visit Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Cardiff, before concluding at the Hackney Empire in London on November 3.
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 audience interaction outside of the script.
He added: “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.
“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.”
Sir Lenny is best known for The Lenny Henry Show, which ran from 1984 to 2005, as well as his appearances on Tiswas and Three Of A Kind.
He also starred alongside George Clooney and Adam Sandler in last year’s Jay Kelly.
