Behind the scenes

It sounds like a really bad idea — Lenny Henry, the black comedian, devising a set of radio sketches to celebrate (oops, I should have said ‘commemorate’) Abolition. You can imagine the scene. Early one morning in late November 2006. An emergency Radio Four planning meeting high up in Broadcasting House on Portland Place. Big table. Lots of coffee. A group of worried-looking producers, scriptwriters, the sound-effects team, all wielding spring-clip noteboards covered with last-minute scrambled ‘ideas’.

‘Tony Blair’s just reminded us that we’ve got this 200-year anniversary coming up next March. It’s going to be really big. A march from Hull. Questions in Parliament. A service in Westminster Abbey. Mansfield Park translated into an anti-slavery tract. We’re going to have to come up with something good on Radio Four.’

‘Yes. But Radio Three’s already bagged the idea of an “Abolition Night” on the anniversary itself, 25 March. And they’ve pinched Adam Hochschild and James Walvin, the two great slavery historians, to explain what happened when the Bill was enacted.