All About Lenny

Well, I was not born in London but in a small industrial town in Northern England called Shipley. They told me later that the town had got its name in ancient times when the place had been no more than a hilly field where families of sheep used to roam about, happily munching the sparkling grass. The old word for sheep was ship, and the word for field was lea – so the name of the town means sheep on the lea. And, before the very first house was ever built there sheep on the lea was all there was.

How did the place where you were born get its name? Come to that, how did you get your name? As for me, I was called Leonard because my mother, who had two brothers – the elder called Leslie and the other called Leonard - wanted me to be called Leonard, after her little brother. When I was a boy, I was very proud of this name because I found out that it meant Lion – Heart, and in those days, I certainly fancied myself as brave as a lion. Nowadays, people call me Lenny, which I think sounds much friendlier.

I was born in an old fashioned hospital in the coldest of all winters, 1946. The snow fell day after day, night after night, and lasted well into the spring of 1947. The snowdrifts grew higher than a man’s head; the hoarfrost was inches thick around the bottom of the tree trunks. They wouldn’t let me go home from the hospital at first because I was suffering from an illness of the lungs called double pneumonia and they thought I needed to stay where it was warm and where there were doctors and nurses close by. I remember – or, at least, I think I do – standing upright in my little cot, clutching onto the rails, watching the fierce open fires that were kept blazing day and night in the great old-fashioned hospital fireplaces. Sometimes now, if I close my eyes, it seems I can still hear their roaring and still see their bright flames dancing like hob goblins over the black, coal nuggets. Whatever it was that those doctors and nurses did for me, it worked like magic, and for years afterwards my mum would take me back to the hospital to visit the special nurse who had looked after me, and who I called Sister, and whom I loved more than all the other nurses.

When I was about four years old I had a pet cat whose name was Ginger. He was what we call a marmalade cat, all orange and stripy like marmalade. He was enormous with great white whiskers and a purr louder than a bear’s growl. One day I couldn’t find him anywhere. I called his name over and over, and searched high and low over the whole house, but Ginger was nowhere to be seen. I loved Ginger and I cried, but I had a plan. I collected up a lot of little stools and cushions from the rest of the house, and made a tiny chapel in the corner of the living room. Over a little bench, I placed a pretty cloth, and on top of it, I put an old bible belonging to my grandmother. Then, I dressed myself up in a cloak made from a tablecloth and a priest’s hat made from a beret turned inside out. And now I was ready. With my hands together in the prayer position I walked solemnly round and around the house singing hymns and songs that I must have picked up from the radio because I don’t remember ever having been to a church by then. At last I entered into the tiny chapel where I knelt in front of my little bench alter; and here I prayed that Ginger would return. And, later that night, what do you know? He did!

In our town, when I was fourteen, there lived a beautiful girl named Susan Brown. She had dark hair and sparkling eyes, and her smile was the loveliest of all smiles. It took two years before I plucked up enough lion courage to ask her to be my girlfriend. But, what a cruel world this can sometimes be! No sooner had she said she would than later that very afternoon my best friend, Billy Frakes, also asked her to be his girlfriend, and it seems she liked Billy better than me. To cheer myself up, later that night, I wrote a poem. This is it:

I love thee Susan
Yet, I cannot have thee
A friend – yes, I still call him so
Has claimed thee
And yet, I’ll linger for that day
When he shall leave thee
And if it be
That thou lovs’t me
I’ll hold thee close unto my heart
And never leave thee

I never showed this poem to either Susan or Billy.

At about that time, my mum wanted me to become a plumber like my Uncle Leonard, her little brother. In those days, you had to take what was called ‘O’ Levels when you were sixteen. These were examinations in basic school subjects, which you passed or failed. Now, if we were lucky, some of us were allowed to take one subject – art – one year earlier than the rest. Luckily, I was one of those students and when I passed this exam with flying colours, my mum changed her mind and said I should become a painter and decorator instead of a plumber. She thought it would be a better use for my artistic talents. Well, I hated the idea of becoming a plumber; I had watched my Uncle Leonard at work sometimes – mending smelly drains and unblocking even smellier toilets. That’s how I knew it was definitely not a job for me! So, I was quite pleased my mum had changed her mind. But, really, I was headed no matter what for one place and one place only, and that place was drama school. Theatre, drama, poetry, acting… all had been what I loved most throughout my growing up years, both at school and in my free time. I was even an evening stagehand for two years at The Bradford Alhambra, the nearest professional theatre in the big city. So, no matter how much some people tried to put me off, it didn’t work. When, later, university time came, off I went to a drama school in London where I learned to become a teacher as well as an actor.

Now, I am happy to say, I am both.

I am a storyteller.

Lenny
February 2005

Here below is a press clipping showing me as a schoolboy acting in the school play in 1964 - well before the invention of digital photography or the internet or P.C.s or even the cassette tape recorder...