The simple idea behind The Assembly (ITV1) is to put a group of people who are never on the telly in the same room as people who are never off it. Lenny Henry has been speaking for many years about shifting the balance of representation in the industry, so could scarcely duck the challenge of an unpredictable grilling by the programme\u2019s panel of autistic, neurodivergent, and learning-disabled interviewers.<\/p>\n
He had possible cause to regret it when placed next to Caroline, who promptly said, \u201cSo I heard you\u2019re divorced.\u201d This could be read as a flirtation, but also as a warning that he might be required to spill the beans about the break-up of his marriage to Dawn French, which neither party ever talks about.<\/p>\n
He looked a mite anxious when the Ts & Cs were read out to him : \u201cNo subject is out of bounds. No question is off the table.\u201d But, whether by accident or design, The Assembly doesn\u2019t trade in gossip. It can be gentler than that, though also tougher. Citing that cruel barometer of cultural relevance, the first questioner cheekily asked Henry what had happened to his waxwork in Madame Tussauds.<\/p>\n
After 50 years in the business, Henry must have been asked more or less everything. I\u2019ve put a lot of questions to him myself, having interviewed him half a dozen times. Thus we\u2019ve all heard him talk, as he did again here, about his Jamaican mother, the widespread racism in his Midlands childhood, his feelings of shame for taking part in The Black and White Minstrel Show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The simple idea behind The Assembly (ITV1) is to put a group of people who are never on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[5343,96,347,185562,263,3133,167224,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-537338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-culture","tag-entertainment","tag-itv","tag-lenny-henry","tag-review","tag-television","tag-television-editors-choice","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}