comedy

Lenny Henry is huge. I don't mean that he's been over-indulging over the festive period (although that has sometimes been a problem for him); just that he is massive in a BBC1-Christmas-Special kind of way. Series can be sold to commissioning edit ors onthe strength of his name alone.

TV figures of this magnitude do not often hit the road. Can you remember the last time Henry's wife, Dawn French, or Harry Enfield went out on tour? But Lenny loves the buzz of live comedy.

On previous tours, the audience has been like putty in his hand as he gives them his "big, big lurve". When his sensational soul singer Theophilus P Wildebeeste asks them, "have you got any African in you?", there are whoops of anticipation before he follows up with the tried and trusted punchline, "do you want some?" And his formidable Jamaican mother has audiences trembling with fear as much as mirth. His newer creations - like the spoof Welsh rappers, Taffies With Attitude, and the Amazonian supermodel Deeva - live up to that form.

See Lenny live and unleashed and die.

Lenny Henry is at the New Victoria Theatre, Woking (0483 761144) on Monday, and at the Wycombe Swan, St Mary St, High Wycombe (0494 512000) on Tuesday