Thursday 23 June 2022 08:44 AM ROLAND WHITE reviews last night's TV: Howzat! A Caribbean celebration of ... trends now
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Lenny Henry’s Caribbean Britain
Rating: 
Suspect
Rating: 
Lenny Henry's mum once lined up her seven children and gave them a stern lecture on modern race relations. 'You have to integrate,' she said. Or, as he remembered it in Lenny Henry's Caribbean Britain (BBC2): 'You have to hintegrate.'
She carried on: 'You have to go amongst the people in Dudley and talk like them, talk to them, eat their food.'
As we know, young Lenny 'hintegrated' so successfully that he mastered Frank Spencer impressions — a virtually compulsory ingredient of British culture in the 1970s — and eventually became Sir Lenny. But in last night's programme, he wondered how much Caribbean culture Britain has absorbed in return. It's more than you might think.
Lenny Henry's mum once lined up her seven children and gave them a stern lecture on modern race relations. 'You have to integrate,' she said. Or, as he remembered it in Lenny Henry's Caribbean Britain (BBC2): 'You have to hintegrate'
True, some people were reluctant to welcome West Indian immigrants. Lenny recalled a trip to the pub when he was 16: 'Within 20 minutes of me sitting down, everybody had left.'
I'd guess that probably wasn't a protest against underage drinking.
Yet calypso became an essential part of the 1960s satire boom and we imported other Caribbean music styles. There was a wonderful black-and-white clip of Alan Whicker, announcing sombrely: 'Any moment now there is going to be a fierce outbreak of ska.'
Music and fashion were the biggest imports. When the young
