by HELEN MURPHY and NICK PELLING

Obviously, someone called Henry Normal is not going to be normal. Henry is not dull, au contraire, Henry is quietly, blazingly brilliant.

You may not be immediately familiar with his name perhaps, but he will almost certainly have shaped your sense of funny. Mr Normal has produced and co-written some of the landmark comedy shows of the last thirty years, including Mrs Merton, The Royle Family, Gavin and Stacey, The Mighty Boosh and much of Steve Coogan’s output, including the immortal Alan Partridge. He may appear a self-effacing bloke but he is, in truth, comedy royalty. And as if that is not enough, he is also a poet – writing poetry so good, as he says, “you can actually understand it.” And the good news is that he is becoming a patron of the Hastings Book Festival. Wayne Herbert, one of the key directors of the festival, says “we are thrilled to have Henry on board.”

Henry Normal. Photo: Richard Davies

We asked him how he got involved in comedy. It turns out that this is a long story that unspools back into his working class roots in Nottingham. His father who was a bicycle engineer at the Raleigh factory in Nottingham and always wore a suit no matter how greasy the job worked long, long hours. And Henry (real name Peter) was schooled in the sense that you had to have a solid job and work hard. Hence, Henry became a very able insurance broker. As Henry says, “at twenty-three I was already old, horribly sensible.” And then that song by The Specials dawned on him: ‘you’ve done too much, much too young.’ The spirit of punk and two-tone spoke to Henry; madly and wonderfully, the insurance broker decided to become a performing poet. Adopting the name Henry Normal as ironic armour against accusations of being weirdly dull.

From this jump into the comic chaos, an odyssey began that included touring with an unknown band called Pulp, and immersion in the full slog of the rock and roll life, playing such venues as Lucifer’s club in Morecambe, at which they were paid not to perform because they were all deemed so bad.  Somehow, amid all the boredom of driving the inevitable transit van, Henry found it in himself to continue writing, both comedy and poetry and all stations in between.

Probably the breakthrough came when Henry teamed up with Frank Skinner and Jenny Eclair to write Packet of Three for Channel 4 in 1991. After that, he became something of an eminence grise of the comedy world, pulling strings, sharpening ideas and editing scripts and generally making stuff happen. 

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Henry lived for many years in Brighton but has now relocated to Fairlight and is very much excited by what he calls the “unmanicured liveliness” of Hastings and St Leonards.  He has now retired from comedy and is largely focussed on his poetry. The launch of his latest collection of poems, The Fire Hills, is an early part of this year’s Hastings Book festival, with two performances at Hastings Library.

Henry’s poetry somehow manages to be comic and serious and a little sad, all at the same time. But there is also a vein of understated lyricism and even little drops of romanticism. Much of it is inspired by the landscape around Fairlight and Winchelsea, particularly the light and skies around the coastline. Henry loves to walk and his work is suffused with “late afternoon sun” and birds that “have plenty to say” and “thesea that doesn’t like being told where it can’t go” and clouds that “queue over Dover” and “northerlies chilling behind my eyes.”  

But if the lyricism is quietly beautiful, the keynote is probably the seeping dark humour that sort of spreads through everything. I particularly liked a poem entitled Zip it which tells you, over and over, to shut your gob in eleven verses:

Shut your trap, cut your crap
Curb your yap
And turn off that tap
Keep shtum, act dumb
Suck your thumb
Let your gums go numb

And on. I could venture to suggest Henry has been influenced by Milligan or Ogden Nash or John Cooper Clarke or even Stevie Smith but Henry Normal is above all just Henry. If you want to get a direct feeling for one person’s filtering of what it is to be simultaneously old, confused, elated and totally alive, read The Fire Hills. It is light, funny, wistful and almost throw-away, but it may just light a little something in your soul.  

Tickets may be available for Henry’s second performance at Hastings Library on March 1, go to www.hastingsbookfest.org. The Fire Hills is published by Flapjack Press. The Hastings book festival will begin in September, see details of events at the above address. 


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https://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/HENRY-NORMAL-web1-scaled-e1678120115417-731x1024.jpghttps://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/HENRY-NORMAL-web1-scaled-e1678120115417-150x150.jpgHIPArtsTop Storiescomedy,comedy royalty,Fairlight,Hastings Book Festival,Hastings Library,Helen Murphy,Henry Normal,Nick Pelling,Poetry,profile,the fire hills,Wayne Herbertby HELEN MURPHY and NICK PELLING Obviously, someone called Henry Normal is not going to be normal. Henry is not dull, au contraire, Henry is quietly, blazingly brilliant. You may not be immediately familiar with his name perhaps, but he will almost certainly have shaped your sense of funny. Mr Normal...The Hastings & St Leonards non-profit community newspaper