8 Days Of 80’s ~ Day 4~ Theophilus P. Wildebeeste a.k.a. Lenny Henry ~ Big Love

Day 4 of the 8 Days Of The 80’s FaceBook challenge ~ Lenny Henry ~ Big Love on Chrysalis Records.

After our wedding in 1983 I moved from A&M Records to work for a company called Tandem who promoted two record companies ~ Chrysalis and Arista. As I mentioned in my last post I left A&M the day before our wedding and I was actually unemployed until 10 days later when I started my new job at the Tandem annual sales conference. The Escort was replaced by a company Cavalier and I switched are slightly to cover Central Southern England. The company ran out of offices in Cavendish Square and I have many great memories from this time.

On the Chrysalis label were Spandau Ballet, Billy Idol, Huey lewis, Go West, Paul Hardcastle, David Grant, Pat Benatar and many more great acts. I helped promote numerous Top 10 singles, quite a few of which reached number one, but for todays entry I’ve decided to pick something that wasn’t quite so big.

Theophilus P. Wildebeeste (Lenny Henry) ~ Big Love

Big Love is taken from the 1983 “Stand up … Get Down” album, this track see’s Lenny as Theophilus P. Wildebeeste (his tribute to Teddy Pendergrass). This was one of his characters, along with pirate radio DJ Delbert Wilkins and newsreader Trevor MacDoughnut, who were featured the following year on his big hit BBC1 TV show. I got to see Lenny Henry a couple of times. The first was at a small comedy show over a pub in Croydon when he was working on his material, then at Surrey University in Guildford where I took a handful of the shop owners I called on and did a “meet and greet” after the show in his dressing room, he was very gracious and a lot of fun.

For more about Lenny Henry CLICK HERE

This picture hangs in our downstairs “toilet of fame”, it’s a bit faded now but still a cherished part of my collection of autographs and special gold and silver discs.

This is day 4 ~ check back on the blog to see the previous three entries.