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Richard Pryor comedy god

I think what Ive learned in the last week or so, however is that, although it is good to model yourself on someone when you are starting out, it is really dumb to try and copy them to the letter. Its fine to be influenced its stupid to copy. I think I loved Pryors attitude so much in the late seventies /early eighties that I would have done anything to have his characters /his material I did preachers and old men and young dudes because Pryor did them. I guess I was lucky that my equivalents of these characters were Afro Caribbean and therefore far enough away from what Pryor was doing (Certainly in quality and intensity) that I somehow got away with it. I think getting to 40 was a huge turning point for me career wise I was starting figure out where I wanted to go /what I wanted to do and these places and subject matters did not involve copying anyone. I felt that my own life and experiences were enough to be getting along with thank you very much. Doing shows about my mothers journey to Great Britain and my growing up in Dudley in the sixties and seventies, and about four disparate characters discussing the war in Iraq, really pushed me as a comic. Working with the wonderful Simon McBurney and Kim Fuller has also extended the boundaries for me in what I thought I could achieve. I admire the pants off Richard Pryor, but I dont want to be him any moreand thats progress, I guess. In the last couple of weeks Ive interviewed Whoopie Goldberg and Paul Mooney and Paul Rodriguez (one of the Latin Kings of Comedy who worked with Pryor in the eighties at the Comedy store in LA) Eddie Izzard ( a huge fan) Sandra Bernhardt and Richard Pryor jr ,who reduced the director , producer and camera crew to tears when he spoke of shooting cocaine into his arm and ringing his dad to tell him what he was doing to get a reaction. I got out of Richard Pryor mode the second I got off the plane in Boston. Ive just had a bitchin vacation in Marthas Vineyard. Its been lovely, loads of sunshine and good food and walking and swimming all that good stuff. I did a writers workshop with Nancy Aronie who runs the Chilmark writing group. Pretty deep stuff it was called writing from the heart and involves Nancy setting you a task with a prompt such as Dinner at our house was I wrote about Saturday soup at our house .If youre really good, I might write it up and put it on the website. Hey-pretty soon the words going to go out about Lennys Britain which is this new TV show `I was telling you about. It involves me going round the country trying to ascertain which area in the region is funniest and why Im going to have a Joke box with me where people can get in and tell their favourite joke/local/dialect or whatever. And we will show the best one on air. Im really looking forward to it and I want to announce in this blog, that if someone sends a joke to this web site and we publish it, they will get a Chef T.Shirt and we might even send em a bottle of champagneHanh? Hanh? Yes, youre nodding arent you.I know Im the man! So lets stay in touch yeah? Good. Speak soon - Len