Lenny Henry says finding out about his real dad hit him like a truck

Sir Lenny Henry has shared how he felt the moment he found out about his biological father as he opened up about his childhood.

Lenny, 67, was the product of a passionate and illicit love affair between Albert Green and his Jamaican-born mother Winnie – a married mother of four at the time. 

For years, Lenny grew up thinking his real father was a man named Winston before discovering his dad was actually a family friend called Albert.

The beloved comedian told The Mirror: ‘I had this bombshell dropped in my life, and I… played amongst the ruins – hoping it would all work out in the end. And you know what? It did.’

He added: ‘Winston was my dad – he raised me.’

Aged 10, Lenny’s mum told him he needed to go and meet ‘Uncle’ Albert on Fridays to help with some chores. 

‘I’d never met this [Albert] guy before. I said, “Good evening”, and went in. He had the hat on, he made chicken and rice, and it was great. So I started to see him every Friday. 

‘I’d take chores like Cinderella – I’d hoover, clean the windows. He’d give me two and six, which was a Cadbury’s chocolate bar and a can of Coke — and that was the level of our relationship.’

That went on for a while until at the age of 12, when Albert’s son Lloyd told him the truth. ‘One day, Lloyd turned to me and said, “You’ve got no idea why you’re here, do you?” I said: “No”. He said: “That’s your dad”.’

Recalling how he felt, Henry said: ‘I was starting to shake. It was like somebody flipped me upside down.’

Albert and Winnie’s forbidden love, which lasted several years, eventually foundered, and decades later Albert would die alone, in near poverty.

The story begins in Lenny’s native Dudley in 1957. Winnie, then 32, had arrived there alone, leaving behind her husband, two sons and two daughters in the Caribbean with the plan that she would send for her family once she was settled.

She found work as a cook in a hospital and moved into shared lodgings at 103 Wellington Road, Dudley, a rambling and dilapidated house that was later knocked down to make space for a leisure centre.

It was there that she was introduced to 30-year-old Albert, who had come to industrial Dudley from Jamaica a few years earlier. Thrown together by loneliness and homesickness, they began an affair.

Another tenant at the shared house was a then 19-year-old fellow Jamaican, Vince Holness.

Lenny, christened Lenworth George Henry, was born on August 29, 1958, at Dudley’s Burton Road hospital. But among the close-knit Jamaican community, the identity of the baby’s father was an open secret from the outset.

For a time, the lovers and their baby son lived as a family. But Winnie’s Jamaican life was about to catch up with her. In the early 1960s, Winston arrived with the couple’s four children, Hylton, Beverly, Seymour and Kay, and Winnie moved out and into a flat in the town with them, and the young Lenny. 

Coincidentally, Winston – who decided to forgive his wife and bring up the boy as his own – found a job in the same factory, Bean Industries in nearby Tipton, where Albert worked as a spin grinder making parts for British Leyland. 

Speaking about Albert previously, Lenny said: ‘On his deathbed he wanted to cram a lot in. He’d talk about Jamaica, and his life there and when he first came to England.

‘I would just sit there and nod and then he was gone. I didn’t cry. There was respect for him but the emotional connection wasn’t there.

‘Seymour, my second-oldest brother, cried at my dad’s funeral like a howling wolf and I thought, ‘Where’s that for me?’

He was devastated, however, when his formidable mother died in 1998 after suffering years of heart problems and diabetes which resulted in doctors having to amputate both her legs.