Rising to the Surface by Lenny Henry review – there’s nothing very funny about fame

‘No one should have to rise against the odds’: Lenny Henry in a scene from Comic Relief in 1995. Photograph: Comic Relief/Getty Images

Lenny Henry has always received more than his fair share of criticism, from racists, whose opinion can be discounted, but also from liberal activist types decrying the regressive buffoonery of his early work and comedy fans who simply find him unfunny. In his uneven second autobiography, following Who Am I, Again? which covered his early life up to 1980, Henry accepts most of this judgment.

“I failed upwards,” he writes in a startling epilogue, citing the Beckett fragment on creative futility. He acknowledges that it took more than 10 years for him to become halfway decent, and that he received more than his fair share of opportunities because of early television fame. “I couldn’t really sing or dance. I’d forget the middle bits of jokes. I’d fall over or knock props over (in front of Princess Anne!),” he writes. As one of our most successful comedians, it’s sobering how little he has felt it. “I kept going, because what was the alternative?”