Sir Lenny Henry has criticised British sitcoms from the past for their blatant racism.
The 61-year-old comedy legend appears in new Gold documentary ‘Race Through Comedy’ in which he explores the shows which depicted Britain’s multi-cultural society on screen from the 1960s onwards.
Lenny is scathing about the racially motivated jokes that featured in programmes from the 1970s such as satirical comedy ”Til Death Us Do Part’, which starred Warren Mitchell as West Ham fan Alf Garnett, and ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ which showed Jack Smethurst’s character Eddie Booth use a number of racist slurs to insult his West Indian neighbour Bill Reynolds – played by ‘EastEnders’ actor Rudolph Walker – who would respond by calling him "snowflake" and "white honky".
Speaking in The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre TV column, Lenny said: "’Love Thy Neighbour’ feels like a relic from the past. At school I’d hear n*g-n*g and c**n and even if you said snowflake back to someone, it didn’t feel as powerful. I think sometimes that show did more harm than good. Despite the barrage of racial slurs, ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ became one of Britain’s most successful- ever sitcoms."
Lenny also blasts late comedy icon Spike Milligan for donning ‘black-face’ to play a Pakistani immigrant factory worker in 1969 sitcom ‘Curry & Chips’, which screenwriter Johnny Speight claimed was meant to satirise racist attitudes in Britain.
Speaking about ‘Curry & Chips’, the ‘Comic Relief’ co-founder said: "It was clear that clumsy race-based humour was central to the show."
Other shows revisited by Lenny in ‘Race Through Comedy’ include programmes like ‘Desmond’s’, ‘Goodness Gracious Me’, and ‘Chewing Gum’ which represented ethnic minorities in a positive way.
Lenny Henry blasts racist sitcom Love Thy Neighbour
