Seriously funny man

Lenny Henry is midway through changing his act. That's not easy after three decades in comedy. His last stage show, Have You Seen This Man?, was both tough and tender about the death of his mother. He reckons it took 70 performances to get right.

Now he's in the West End to try out a new show. He wants it to be heartfelt and sophisticated. But he hates the suggestion that that means axing the laughs.

'There's a way of telling stories that is funny but also moving and that doesn't bludgeon the audience with knob jokes,' says Henry. 'I think I'm going to do that. There was an interview with me the other day that gave the impression I was saying I'm not funny any more. In fact, what I'm doing is applying my 45-year-old-doing-an-Open-University-English-degree brain to the problem of how to be funny on stage.'

His key cohorts on his mission are long-time co-writer Kim Fuller - always to be known as the man who Lenny Henry wrote Spice World with - and Simon McBurney, from theatre company Complicite. Henry drops his creative advisor's name with a frequency that suggests he has placed a lot of faith in the man behind cutting-edge shows such as Mnemonic and The Elephant Vanishes.

'Simon melds physicality, comedy and technical expertise,' says Henry. 'That's why we're working with him. And he's getting something from me, I hope.

I don't think he's used to working with one gobby bloke. I think he's sitting there thinking: "Usually they do what they're told, this bloke keeps arguing with me."

It's not the first time Henry has changed course. After winning ITV's talent show New Faces in 1975, he became a novelty item on an unreconstructed comedy circuit. But as the alternative scene bloomed in the early 1980s, his TV work - on Chris Tarrant's anarchic kids' show Tiswas, then in sketch show Three Of A Kind - gave him fresh credibility. Huge solo success followed.

Four years ago, Henry checked into The Priory. There were tabloid reports of problems in his marriage to Dawn French. He was having a midlife crisis. And now it's feeding back into his work.

'As you hit 40,' he says, 'things start to happen in your life. Friends' marriages were falling apart. People start dying around you. I went through 18 months when my mum died, my brother-in-law died, my sister-in-law died and my auntie died.

'Everything changes and you begin to realise your own mortality. You start to want to do things in a better way, in a deeper way. All the stuff that hit me when I was 40 made me stronger.' And yet his TV sketch show Lenny Henry In Pieces remains fairly traditional...