The Kenneth Williams Story: A Reputations Special

-IN VARIETY OF VOICES:

-'Hello. Good evening to you, sir. I say! I like your yachting blazer!

'Did you know, I'm Britain's secret weapon?'

-You don't know what agony it's been, yearning for you - yearning to give you my all.

-I don't want your all.

-I don't even want a little bit.

-I will not be put off.

-Matron!

No! Please! Oh, your hand!

'I could do something wild with a couple of creepers up his trellis.

'Here we are, Autumn's come round...'

-NICHOLAS PARSONS:

-'Kenneth, restrain yourself.

-Ohh!

'I'm young! I'm virile!

'I'm butch!'

Kenneth Williams' performances on radio, television and film made him one of the best-loved of comedians.

Good evening...

Kenneth was the funniest man I think I've ever met.

-What do you want?

-I'm your room-mate.

-Oh, no!

-Stop messing about!

-To many people,

and to Kenneth Williams himself, comedy was only part of his appeal.

I'm a cult figure. I'm an enormous cult. I'm one of the biggest cults you'll get round here.

Kenneth was, in the best sense,

a brilliant show-off.

I look in the mirror and think, "Ohh..."

"What a dish," I think.

He was a melancholic...

depressed man, with...

shot through with moments of... delight.

He was a very angry, unhappy, lonely man who, out of that,

found a tremendous kind of comedy.

'They think I'm the most diverting, brilliant, energetic creature

-'that ever walked across a stage.'

-AUDIENCE LAUGHS

He was a man with so many facets, so many characters.

He wanted you to see them all, at once, immediately, now. Twelve of them, one after the other.

He would... If one said, "Would the real Kenneth Williams stand up?" I don't think he could.

I don't think there really was such a person,

or if there was...

I think he kept that Kenneth Williams

behind closed doors.

Behind closed doors for 40 years, he kept a diary.

When it was published after his death, it revealed the gap

between the public performer and the intense and solitary private man.

He had a feeling of exclusion

from the common pursuits of others.

It must have been difficult for him to have been him, I think.

Kenneth Williams' solution to the problem of being him was a great success for a very long time.

He invented a comic persona that brought him the applause of an admiring public,

but his dependency on the character he created ultimately cost him dear.

From childhood, Kenneth Williams had a sense that he didn't belong.

His upper-class vowels were at odds with his origins in a working-class area of London near King's Cross

where he was born in a one-room flat in 1926.

The family later moved to the poorer fringes of Bloomsbury when Kenneth's father Charlie, a hairdresser,

started a business which still trades today.

Kenneth and his father never got on. He was a disappointment to Charlie, who wanted a son as tough as he was,

as Kenneth's sister Pat revealed in a radio interview shortly before her death.

Nobody got on with Charlie Williams. He was a real, old-fashioned, Victorian bully.

Ken used to just look at him

with utter contempt.

A man once came into the shop. "Oh, I'd like a blow wave."

He said, "You'll get no blow waves from me. Are you a bloomin' iron?

"Iron 'oof? No irons in my shop. Get out."

From his earliest days, all his love was focused on his mother Louie.

The family strength was between Kenneth and his mother.

He said in his diary, "I will never love anyone as much as I love her."

He realised there would be no other important relationship in his life.

'I do love Louie. She's the only person I've ever loved.

'By love, I mean caring so much that it's altruistic,

'feeling her presence when she's not physically there, and missing her.'

Louie was very fussy.

If there was any mess on the floor,

"Look at this mess. Simply disgusting."

And Kenny would follow round after her with a bit of rag. "Look at dis mess. Simply disdusting."

There was another reason why Kenneth was Louie's favourite - a reason that remained a family secret.

Pat was illegitimate, conceived when Louie was engaged to a man who later abandoned her.

Three years later, Charlie married her. But it wasn't a love match. That came when Kenneth was born.

Ken was her idol.

She idolised him, ever since he was a baby.

I suppose, because he was...

legitimate.

He was her...her baby boy.

And everything was for Kenny.

I suppose Pat felt that she didn't belong any more.

Dad would come home with his present, you see? "Present for you, son. Here you are."

I'd go, "Oh, good. Where's mine?" "You ain't got no present.

"It's for the boy."

And Ken would open this parcel.

Pair of boxing gloves.

And he'd hold them out. "What am I supposed to do with these?"

"Put them on your bleedin' fists and have a fight."

"No, thank you."

And he'd just drop them in my father's lap and walk out the room.

Kenneth's defiance of his father could only go so far.

He starred as Princess Angelica in a school play. Charlie tried to push his son in a different direction.

He said to me, "Acting's rubbish.

"You've got to have a trade, boy. A trade."

And so Kenneth left school at 14

to pursue a career his father approved of - cartography.

His apprenticeship was cut short during the Blitz

when he was evacuated to Bicester, to the home of a bachelor vet.

Kenneth had his first taste of educated middle-class life, and he loved it.

The house was spacious, to me. I come from very cramped quarters.

Four-poster beds, candelabras to light your way to bed, a room full of books. His library was enormous.

Kenneth immersed himself in a whole new lifestyle, and returned to London with a new accent.

I think that's where he got the posh voice and all that.

I think he mixed with people that were...well-heeled.

-Bicester had a lasting impact on him in other ways.

-When he was evacuated,

he was on the bus somewhere and an older man got on and put his hand on his knee.

I think it went further than that.

Kenneth said when the guy got off the bus it was possibly the happiest day of his life so far. And why not?

In 1944, Williams was drafted into the army and, a year later, sent to the Far East to fight the Japanese.

-An unlikely soldier.

-I'd always had my own room.

When we were evacuated, my own room.

In this barrack room, I used to take the trousers down, put the pyjama bottoms on, and then do the rest.

They rumbled it. "Hoi! Frightened of showing us your willy?"

ROARS OF LAUGHTER

And after that... You know, I became quite uninhibited after that.

Clearly not cut out to be a soldier, he shone off the training ground.

There was about 20 of us with double bunks. When the lights went out,

that's when Kenneth started his little act.

He used to get up with a torch and shine it on himself and recite silly poems and stories.

I don't know where he got them from. Some were from his real life. He had us in fits.

If the chance came, he would take somebody off straight away.

"For heaven's sake, man! Pull the stomach round to the front!"

Kenneth was a natural performer,

a perfect recruit for a new unit - Combined Services Entertainment.

Halt!

Military life met show business to entertain the troops.

Fellow members of the unit included comedian Stanley Baxter

-and film director John Schlesinger, then a conjurer.

-CSE, for all of us,

was our first kind of encounter, as it were, with being professional performers.

And I think that Kenneth was...

a genuine original. I remember the voices,

I think, from day one.

-AS CHURCHILL:

-"We shall fight on the beaches, on the landing grounds." I had a cigar.

For many, CSE was a liberating experience,

a place where some performers could acknowledge their homosexuality.

There were so many like-minded people in an entertainments unit

that it was... something of a revelation.

Kenneth had begun to keep a diary.

It offers a revealing glimpse of his growing unease with his sexuality.

"Having a very vivid social life.

"Met Peter. Very camp conversation. P was looking for talent.

"Malaya C..." Malaya Club. "..getting quite gay."

I think that's the homosexual meaning of "gay" being used in 1947,

although the show that Kenneth was in was Going Gay, so you can never tell.

This happens a lot, this phraseology. "No traditional worries."

I think that means, "No sexual contact."

He was quite...troubled...

by...

his sexuality.

Some of us had much greater ability to come to terms with it, I think,

but he didn't.

Williams returned to London in 1947 determined to go on the stage,

but not as a comic or entertainer. His ambition

was to be a serious actor.

For five years he learnt his trade

in weekly repertory companies but became frustrated by what he saw as a lack of vision in the theatre.

He wanted to run a theatre company.

His approach to theatre in those early years was curious.

It was almost socialistic, you would say.

He wanted a communal theatre,

an egalitarian theatre where everybody was on the same level.

There was a bit of JB Priestley in this - The Good Companions.

Attempts to find financial backing failed and the group disbanded.

Disappointed, Kenneth went back to live with his parents

and took refuge in his other passion, educating himself.

He was a very serious thinker.

He was very, very well informed

because he read a lot.

He was always interested in literature, in history,

and had this amazing memory.

Kenneth claimed that every day of his life he learnt four new words from the dictionary, and a new poem.

But his theatrical and bookish pursuits only widened the rift between him and his father.

The father would say, "Who are you?"

"I've come to see Kenny." "Kenneth! One of your poncy friends 'ere!"

I-I thought it was a goat. I didn't know.

Mistake...

He won roles in TV dramas and films,

although fight scenes were never quite his style.

But what he really wanted was success on the stage. His big break

finally came in 1954 when he was cast as the Dauphin in a West End production

of George Bernard Shaw's St Joan.

He was certainly the best Dauphin I have ever seen in many productions of St Joan.

He was, um... rigorously inside the role.

Mind you, there was a lot of the Dauphin in Kenneth.

But it was fully thought through.

St Joan was a critical triumph for Williams and marked the turning point in his career,

but not in the way he imagined.

He was seen by Dennis Main Wilson, a BBC producer who was looking for talent for a new type of radio show.

MUSIC FROM "HANCOCK" We decided with Tony that we would like to do a situation comedy

on radio without any funny voices. Just character comedy without jokes or funny voices.

Instead of getting different actors, we wanted one person to do the lot.

Dennis said, "I've just found him.

"Wonderful actor.

"He's playing the Dauphin in St Joan."

We said, "That sounds ideal for situation comedy(!)"

We said, "No funny voices?" "No, no."

So this rather strange looking young man came to read through. Ken came out with,

"Good evenin'."

Funny voice, straight away. And on the show, it got an enormous laugh.

KNOCKING Come in.

Good evenin'.

Instead of saying, "We're doing away with funny voices," we used it.

Radio was the ideal medium for the skill Williams had perfected since childhood - doing voices.

-Ken had four voices. His snide voice.

-No, stop messing about.

-His Felix Aylmer voice.

-That owe your lives, your faith, your services...

Felix Aylmer was a very elderly actor of the time and he had this wonderful plummy voice.

Picture of a young girl in a leopardskin bikini...

-Ken did an impression of him.

-Is she in the case?

-No.

-What a pity.

Nigel Smythe voice, upper-class twit.

-Sergeant Plunger...

-Sir!

-Get the arc light set up.

-Yes, sir.

-Right, chaps, cordon off the area.

-Good evening.

-Go away. This is not a side-show.

Then he had his Cockney, which was an impression of his father, I suppose.

'Ere you are, mate. Blabbermouth Building. That'll be six and nine.

-I'm not paying that. It's only a mile.

-But we come the long way round.

You seem to collect voices. Do you borrow them from people that you've met or pluck them from the air?

Oh, yes, they are taken from people I've known. Pinched, I suppose.

The snide voice - that "stop messing about" one...

I met a boy who worked in the Mint.

He described how you were searched if they suspected you were taking out anything that you shouldn't.

He had a perpetual smile. He said, "Oh, you know,

"you have to be careful because they make you take your clothes off."

There was a very good idea there.

-SNIDE VOICE:

-I listen to your radio show every week. I think it's rotten.

All except that bloke with the funny voice. He's a scream, ain't he?

-LAUGHTER

-Oh, he has me in stitches.

You know, there are actually people like that.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE

He turned out to be a grotesque,

which is quite essential. Some of your great comic characters are basically grotesques.

Frankie Howerd was a grotesque. Tommy Cooper, in his own way, was a grotesque. Ken had this quality.

Erm... It's a quality...

It's not natural. It's supernatural, in a way.

Williams' time on the Hancock show was not happy. He believed that Hancock resented his success.

-You don't like me now.

-No, I don't.

-Come on, let's be chums. Make up.

-No.

When the show transferred to TV, Williams' role in it diminished.

He blamed Hancock, convinced he didn't want his company either on or off the show.

'Had a chat with Tony. I don't think he wants me in the set-up in future.

'He thinks that set characters make a rut in story routine.

'The only one he wants back is Sidney James. He's mad about him. They go everywhere together.'

We were trying to get the subject matter and characters more realistic.

Less cartoony, less farcical.

It was nothing to do with any jealousy on Tony's part, or worry about Ken taking...

Nothing like that. It was a purely professional decision. In my opinion, a correct one.

Williams was living in the first of a succession of small, spartan flats he would always inhabit alone.

He shunned close personal relationships, and the diary became his confessional and his confidante.

"Really," he says...

And he puts it in italics. "Diaries are about loneliness." His certainly was.

It's having some sort of echo in your head of a voice that otherwise would have been another person's voice.

If he'd been sharing his domesticity with somebody, having conversations,

there would've been no need for a diary. There was no such person,

only Louie, whose understanding of his feelings was necessarily limited, so he had to put it in writing.

'Did the Hancock show from the Piccadilly. It was a general disaster. Really terrible.

'This team is so dreary to me now, especially James and Hancock -

'listless and disinterested. Their conversation is real pleb stuff.

'I don't care for any of them.'

If people had asked me in the '50s, "Who is one of the happiest people you've met?" I'd say Ken Williams.

Always laughing. Very funny man.

30 years later I picked up his diaries

to find out that he hated every minute of it. I was astounded.

Yes, they are angry, waspish, bitter.

But they are beautiful jobs of writing. That was his release,

where he went to himself in private

and told himself the real story.

The heart of this was his inability to come to terms with homosexuality.

He was tormented by this throughout his life.

'I feel a sexual nature which I am thoroughly ashamed and disgusted by.

'It colours all my life, everything.

'The sight of a navvy working in the street, stripped to the waist,

'and gold, tanned flesh and muscles, and I am back on square one - full of guilt and shame.

'Even if I did it, I know I couldn't live with sex.'

-How is your love life? How do you rate yourself as a lover?

-I don't...

No, I'm asexual. I should have been a monk. Should have been a monk.

I'm only interested in myself,

and I would regard any kind of "re-la-tion-ship"...

as deeply intrusive.

Privacy is important to me. Anything which invaded that would be a threat.

So I live a life of celibacy. I'm not interested in the other.

But in his early 30s, Williams did enter into a physical relationship

that was the closest he came to sharing his life.

In 1958 he met 21-year-old Australian Paul Florance. The two were close for four years.

After Florance returned to Australia, they corresponded right up until Kenneth's death.

'When I see your familiar handwriting, when I read lines

'only you can write, I am plunged back into the past.

'I am that tearful suitor of Endsleigh Court days.

'I begin to wonder if anything really alters.'

I feel that Kenneth did love me.

When we first met, I was bowled over by...by him.

There was a...a bond between us...

which was...

very important to him and important to me.

At one point it was even suggested that he and I shared an apartment...

erm...in the...in the early days.

I think he viewed the act of sex...

as something that was not and could never be part of his make-up.

He felt that any physical relationship,

no matter what form it took,

could be, for him, perhaps a form of destruction.

But his sexual urges were the same as anybody else's.

But in future, Williams' relations with men were confined to brief encounters.

Instead there was what he called in the diary, "traditional activity".

I think this was a disguised expansion of "trade".

Pick-ups. That was his sex life.

Always with big, strong men. He said he wanted strong arms to hold him.

This is obviously what he wanted from Charlie and never got.

Williams' extreme sexual repression

drove him into another make-believe world.

He said, "I have my fantasies, and no human being could live up to them."

I think, because his imagination has been fantastically vivid,

and the margins of his life were populated by beautiful people like road diggers stripped to the waist,

it had to be masturbation. That was his chief sexual activity,

referred to by him as the Barclays. Barclays Bank, in rhyming slang.

And he was obviously a dedicated artist in this form.

My world revolves about myself. I look in the mirror and think, "Oh...

"Oh, what a dish!" I think.

This wonderful figure.

And this hair. Spun gold, it's been described.

I'm described as a head of spun gold. I hope they're getting it.

'Snow blizzard

'whirling outside all day.

'I hoovered the lounge carpet, dressing only in bathing trunks.

'It was very daring, and the atmosphere was charged with sex.

'If anyone had walked in, they would have been irresistibly attracted.'

He was tremendously narcissistic. This could take the simplest forms - just looking in the mirror

and realising how beautiful he was.

There'd be a transport of narcissism that would reach to erotic heights.

And I think the Barclays - the famous Barclays Bank - would follow.

While Williams could never accept his homosexuality,

what he did incredibly successfully was exploit it in his professional life. In 1958,

Williams joined the programme Beyond Our Ken, later Round The Horne.

With Hugh Paddick he created a legendary double act featuring two outrageously camp chorus boys,

Julian and Sandy.

Hello, I'm Julian. This is my friend Sandy. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

What sent you trolling off round the world like you did?

-The call of the sea, Mr Horne.

-Yes.

-I can't resist it.

-He can't resist it.

When he gets the call, he's got to go. Go to go. Haven't you, Jule?

-Like a shot.

-Like a shot.

-Off like a shot.

-So I said, "Well, I'm game."

-And he is, Mr Horne. He's game.

Oh, no, ducky. There's no-one gamier.

It was the first time that a couple of camp gentlemen had really ever been heard on radio ever.

And we were astounded, I think, that it got past the censor.

We had a censor then, of course. But it did.

It was conspiracy between the eight million people who listened

who each would say, "I understand it, but I don't think my neighbour does."

-Mr Horne, what brings you trolling in here?

-Help me. I've erred.

-We've all 'eard, ducky. It's common knowledge.

-Will you take my case?

-Depends. Our criminal practice takes up our time.

-But apart from that...

LAUGHTER

With an audience at eight million, Round The Horne was the most popular radio show of its day.

Williams enjoyed his time on the programme, chiefly because of urbane straight man Kenneth Horne.

Williams adored him.

For Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Horne was the father he never had.

His own father was a homophobic... "Boxing will make a man of him."

Kenneth Horne was a very dear man, a very decent chap,

and Kenneth thought, "If only he would be my father." He responded very much to him in that way.

Kenneth Williams, all his life, was looking for an ideal father.

If you could put one line together to explain Kenneth Williams,

it was Kenneth Williams in search of the father he wanted.

But with the rest of the cast, Williams' ego was all too evident

-as he fought to be the centre of attention.

-Egotist in every way.

I think he would have preferred to have done all the parts.

I think he was really... My part, everybody's part.

All the women. And he would have been awfully good, I'm sure. Awfully talented.

If you met him for the first time...

he would size you up.

If he thought you were somebody out of his reach or alien to him,

he would probably tell you one of his dreadful, dreadful jokes. Bum jokes, we used to call them.

If you were offended by it, he'd keep on and on and on until it hammered you into the ground.

It was as if some demon had got into him sometimes.

I've been held back! I have. I could have been a star. A star!

I could have been somebody, and they're coming up to my house and knocking on my door

and making me a very nice "pro-po-si-tion".

There! It's out! It's out!

-He was so suppressed that it came bursting out in comedy.

-And I'm glad!

I'm glad!

Kenneth Horne was archetypally English laid-back.

Then you get Kenneth - this little, manic, furious man.

-Can we go on now?

-Yes. You're wanted on the phone.

And all the suppression, all the rage, all the loneliness came out in those performances.

That's why they were so mesmeric.

Williams was a star, but success made little impact on his life.

He discouraged visitors to his home,

and the few who were allowed into his flat were amazed by what they saw.

I've never walked into any house

which was as drab. There was nothing on the wall. There were just grey walls,

these two chairs, a rug, and one solid piece of furniture, really.

And that was all.

It was startling in its absence of texture.

There was just no colour,

no life in the room,

no...joy in the room.

His musical taste was lieder. He used to listen to very esoteric lieder.

GERMAN SONG PLAYS

Hated me using the lavatory as well. He didn't want me to do that.

I've only met one person who used it. Even his own sister Pat was debarred.

FLUSHING

He even put plastic

over the stove to keep things from penetrating.

And that... I think that's rather telling.

I mean, he didn't like being penetrated in any sense of the word.

This was really a little cave of consciousness that he had there.

Nothing came in except him.

Williams spent his money not on himself

but on his parents, for whom he bought a flat in Kensington.

-Power in the family had shifted from Charlie to his son.

-As Kenneth was getting more famous,

Charlie had to toe the line.

He couldn't say what he really... thought, you know,

because of Louie. Everything had to be just so for Kenneth.

Louie increasingly lived her life through her son and was a loyal fan.

Louie always was at every broadcast and she used to sit about two rows from the front.

And there was...

to my mind, a very weird relationship - mother-son relationship -

because all his most salacious remarks or lines in the script

would always be directed straight at his mother.

She just lapped it all up. Probably thought he's funnier than the rest.

In the late '50s and early '60s, Williams was in big demand. As well as radio,

he topped the bill in a string of revues. Revue was an ideal vehicle

for Kenneth's high camp, quickfire style, and he became a master at controlling an audience.

The revue that launched him in 1957 was written by an unknown Cambridge undergraduate.

He was perfect for the part. It was a zany revue centred on a character

who had the same quirky separateness from everything around him.

Someone who stood back and commented.

So I couldn't believe that there was anyone who was so exactly what I needed.

And he was easily the funniest person I'd ever met. I was astonished.

-Orange!

-Pink!

-Maroon!

-Grey!

-Violet!

-Brown!

-Blue!

-Orange!

-Green? What a ridiculous colour for a suit.

Lettuce green, if you don't mind.

Kenneth was like a malevolent elf. He wasn't like a real person, almost.

They don't like my lettuce green suit, and they don't like the fact that I grew my own lettuce.

He primped around, and his little bum stuck out.

It was weird. A weird experience. He was hysterically funny, but like something from another planet.

The sketch-based format of revue

was perfect for Williams to win laughs through his inventiveness.

He became a notorious ad-libber.

A five-minute sketch could go on for 20 minutes. He would beat the audience into submission,

and then go beyond it so the audience was uncomfortable. It became scary.

One day he just rushed me into another room

and he said, "You and I have got to remember

"that we're the ones who are going to go up there and take it, and we've got to protect ourselves.

"What we have to do with this piffle is ad-lib and improvise round it."

"Outrageous" was how critics described Williams in revue,

but the impulse behind his behaviour was serious. He now topped the bill.

He could not allow himself to fail.

Do you get on well? Do you find that Kenneth makes things up as he goes along?

-He's got an inventive mind.

-But I'm co-operative. Very professional.

-How dare you?

-Do you mind?

-How about that line last night?

-The lines that YOU put in...

Williams' revues were attracting the best writing talent, including Harold Pinter, John Mortimer,

and Footlights star Peter Cook.

Many of Cook's famous sketches were originally written for Williams.

-SNIDE VOICE:

-I've got a viper in this box, you know.

-Really?

-Good gracious me.

-It's not an asp.

-Good.

-Looks rather like one, but it's not one.

-Oh, no, I wouldn't have an asp.

-No.

Some people can't tell the difference between a viper and an asp. More fool them, I say.

Ironically, it was Cook

who killed off Kenneth's career in revue when he performed the sketches himself.

My viper eats like a horse.

-Like a horse, eh?

-Oh, yes.

Yes. Yes, I'd like a horse.

By 1961, revue had a new look

and a new breed of performers.

Beyond The Fringe, starring Peter Cook and colleagues, was considered so clever

that nothing else could compete.

Beyond The Fringe, in a way,

rubbished everything that had gone before. A lot was said in the papers about how effete revue had been,

and it wasn't relevant today, and it wasn't any more. Things change.

Things move on. It was quite right that it should shift.

Kenneth didn't think he fitted into that extraordinarily clever world,

although he was extraordinarily clever. He was extremely well read, but he hadn't been to university.

He felt, I think, like I did - inferior to this new breed that swamped the theatre.

Williams' niche in the West End had collapsed,

but work had started to come in from a very different direction.

He'd been spotted in revue by producer Peter Rogers and offered a role in a new comedy film.

Without thinking too much about it, Williams took it.

Red Admiral here. Red Admiral here.

Williams' performances in the Carry On films would later overshadow all his other work.

He appeared in 22 of them, more than any other actor.

-What happens if anything goes wrong?

-We'll have to amputate your leg.

But his attitude to them was always ambivalent.

-Your misreading of my potential is sublime in its totality.

-Get him out of here!

-Charming(!)

I think there was a great love-hate relationship. What was good about it,

they gave him security. There's no doubt about that. Films being made every year were bringing in money.

And another plus was the fact that it was like an extended family.

Some people he loved, some he hated.

But, of course, that makes life. The bad side of them was,

it was a lot of bums and tits jokes.

The very base humour that Kenneth found very easy to do, but that wasn't the reason he became an actor.

I think there was a certain pull there.

At this stage, the Carry On films were a lucrative side-line for Williams.

Success in the theatre was still what mattered. There had been some heavyweight roles since St Joan.

Orson Welles had cast him in Moby Dick, and he played opposite Alec Guinness in Hotel Paradiso.

His opportunity to show what a fine comedy actor he was came in 1962

when Peter Shaffer, who later penned Equus and Amadeus, chose Williams to star in

the second part of his double bill, The Private Ear and The Public Eye.

He loved what he called

the literacy of the play.

He loved that. He would say, "I really adore that kind of writing.

"It's proper writing." And his nostrils would flare.

He had this knack of looking comic but he wasn't being comic at all. He was being deadly serious.

He was delighted by the prospect

of speaking any sentences that had an elegance to them, or a sheen to them, or a verbal felicity to them.

Playing opposite him was a rising young actress named Maggie Smith.

She soon recognised his mastery of comic technique and Williams became her teacher as well as her co-star.

Ken, in the office at the Queen's Theatre, said, "Look, ducky..."

He said, "You know, you're being

"absolutely boring,"

and went through it sentence by sentence and said, "You'd never say a sentence like that. You wouldn't."

I was literally learning a speech and just saying it, thinking, "How clever. I've learnt all the words."

I'd never thought of colouring things vividly.

Immediacy is the greatest gift in comedy.

It's what you were saying about the challenge nightly with an audience.

To make it seem as though it is coming out for the first time.

Absolutely. And that you surprise the audience a lot of the time.

-Kenneth's relationship with Maggie Smith was more than just professional.

-Twin souls,

very alike in some ways.

And I was always aware that they had

this...what I can only call a shining intimacy.

Would you say Kenneth had been a big influence on you?

Enormous. I pinch from him all the time.

Can you give us some examples?

In Black Comedy I'm doing a Kenneth. He hasn't seen it. He'd be livid.

'This girl draws me like a magnet,

'and I am inextricably involved with her.

'It is a knot I will never want, or be able, to untie.'

Friends like Maggie were crucial to Williams and made his loneliness more bearable. More than anything

he loved family life and spent a great deal of time at the homes of fellow actors like Richard Pearson.

He was included in their families very, very much.

And he loved that. He loved children.

Williams thought highly of marriage and the companionship it brought.

He even sought it for himself.

He felt there was a domestic norm he'd like to conform to. He'd like to be part of a married couple.

There were women - possibly four or five women - that he proposed

a kind of celibate marriage to.

Annette Kerr was to receive three marriage proposals,

-the first when they appeared together in rep.

-One day Kenneth came downstairs and told us all off

because we'd left a sort of jelly bit under the soap in the soap-dish.

It was very messy, and the thing that you had to do was bring your soap...

your nail-brush like that, put your soap on top of it,

and then you didn't get the soap-dish mucky.

So we said, "Yes, Kenneth. Right, Kenneth."

A little after this, he suggested that I should marry him.

I said, "Kenneth, I couldn't marry you. You're so fussy."

"Oh," he said.

He was so terribly fastidious.

He would never have been able to share accommodation with anybody else.

And I think that fastidiousness is one of the things

that contributed to the celibacy.

Williams was looking for more than a celibate marriage.

It's clear from a diary extract that he had considered adopting children

and creating a family with one of the women to whom he'd proposed.

'I said to Nora, "We've both of us wasted our lives. The days have run through our fingers like bathwater."

'I went on about what we should have done ten years ago and adopted the children.

'I know, fundamentally, she agreed.'

Kenneth was having a difficult time with his own family.

His parents' relationship had gone from bad to worse. Charlie was in decline mentally and physically.

The crisis came when he swallowed this stuff out of a bottle which said "Gee's Linctus". A cough remedy.

But it turned out to be carbon tetrachloride. The dairy says that it's mysterious how it got there.

Charlie never recovered.

Kenneth told friends he believed his father had committed suicide.

'So it's all over.

'The doctor told Louie his brain was damaged, the heart was impaired and kidneys in bad condition -

'that it was, in reality, a good thing, because he would have become worse.

'Show went OK. Audience good.'

Williams now had to face up to a crisis in his career - his first West End flop.

He was a Puck-like character in Gentle Jack, starring Edith Evans.

After Gentle Jack there was terrible booing.

She said to me as the curtain fell, "Well, I heard one 'bravo'."

I said, "No, that was 'go home'."

Later Williams could joke about it but at the time, he was devastated.

He couldn't face performing without having the audience on his side,

and he lost confidence in himself and in the play.

Williams fell back on what he knew would win the love of the audience.

I went a week after it opened.

He came down this rope, looked at the audience and went, "Hello."

The audience fell about laughing. Dame Edith Evans wasn't amused.

"Stick to what's written, boy."

The problem for him was that if he didn't get any laughs,

what's wrong? He was used to laughs.

Williams' comic persona was a means of self-protection, but his reliance on it damaged his reputation

and meant he never became the kind of performer he'd wanted to be and knew he could be.

London in the mid-'60s was the place to be. The capital was swinging and change was in the air.

Kenneth Williams looked unlikely to play any part in it. Conservative of habits, he seemed out of step.

But his outer conformity hid a fascination with the sexual freedoms of the age.

It was Swinging London, and Kenneth was always immaculately dressed. He was a smart little chap.

He had a furled umbrella.

He was on the back of my Lambretta. He sat straight, on the pillion.

I said, "I'll go round Eros." I felt a bit high.

Kenneth suddenly started shouting, waving this umbrella, saying,

"Where's it happening? Where are the orgies? Why haven't we been asked?"

Williams' wish to be part of the action was answered in 1964

when he met one of the most anarchic and flamboyant figures of the age, the playwright Joe Orton,

who'd just caused outrage with his West End hit Entertaining Mr Sloane.

With him, I found myself laughing. He was funny. An impish kind of wit.

Like Williams, Orton was gay, working-class, a prodigious diarist.

Unlike Williams, Orton revelled in his sexuality.

He lived with his lover Kenneth Halliwell

and sought sexual adventure at every opportunity.

The freedom of his humour,

the freedom of himself is what so appealed to Williams, who was so unfree in himself, physically.

He was bound by convention,

and under wraps.

Even if Williams couldn't in himself be unabashed, he could be part of someone's story who WAS unabashed,

and that was liberating.

I remember one escapade in Leicester. He said, "We couldn't go to my parents' house."

So he took this bloke instead to the porch - the only part that remained - of a derelict house.

He said having sex in this porch was difficult, it was so confined.

He said, "My bum was outside most of the time and it was freezing."

Orton wanted his friend to do more than take vicarious pleasure in his exploits.

As his diary reveals, he urged Kenneth to shed his inhibitions

and become more like him.

' "I'm guilty about being homosexual," he said.

' "You shouldn't be," I said. "Reject all the values of society.

' "Enjoy sex. When you're dead you'll regret not having fun with your genital organs." '

They always looked like...

..two delinquent schoolboys to me.

Both of them rejoicing in one another's schoolboy cleverness.

And both needed success,

and didn't want "unsuccess" at any price.

Orton was determined his new friend would star in his latest play, Loot,

and cast him as the wordly and brutal Inspector Truscott.

Williams was thrilled to work with the country's hottest new writer,

but their collaboration ended in disaster.

Loot died a death on a provincial tour and never got to the West End.

In Bournemouth one usherette was reported as saying it was unnecessarily filthy,

as if there really was a necessary amount of filth.

People were emptying the auditorium.

We came under the Watch Committee in Manchester because we hadn't got the seal of the Lord Chamberlain.

We had policemen in the wings. "If you say that line... The Watch Committee are banning that line."

The Policeman had to say, "Where do you do it? The streets are well lit. Where have you done it?"

The Boy had to say, "On crowded dance floors during the rumba."

They said it was an aspersion about the local dance halls.

The offence the play caused was not the only problem. The cast couldn't find a playing style that worked.

No-one was struggling more than Kenneth Williams.

Although Kenneth loved the play,

it seemed to me, as we proceeded with rehearsals, that he was wrongly cast.

'After the show I felt so depressed.

'I don't know what to do. The shambles of this production is unbelievable.

'The cast is demoralised, the script in rags, and some of it nonsense.

'I wish I'd never set foot near the rotten mess.'

Orton had failed to revive Williams' stage career, but he did transform his private world.

In the summer of 1966,

Orton and Halliwell took Williams on holiday to a place that would change his life.

Tangier in the 1960s was a haven

for gay men drawn there by the availability of sexual partners

in a society tolerant of unconventional lifestyles.

Orton was like Pinocchio at the fair.

Orton could get into it, loved it. He was sensual, young, muscular.

Williams approached the Tangier experience with restraint.

Barry Wade met him on his first trip there.

He used to wear his full clothes -

suit, tie,

jacket - and sit on the beach.

Completely dressed. "I'm not taking my clothes off in front of someone."

But we would all go swimming and Kenneth would have a few drinks,

and plonk himself into a deckchair and go to sleep, rather like that.

He might take the jacket off if it got too hot. That's about as far as you'd get, I think.

He would complain bitterly all the time, but thoroughly enjoyed it.

While the temptations of Tangier unsettled him,

-Williams couldn't resist.

-He came to the villa.

I used to rent a villa there for three months. He loved all that.

The villa, the parties. Complained, of course. "I shouldn't be here.

"It's immoral, the whole place." Jumped on the back of a bike

with a Moroccan, and drove off.

'Eventually he took me to a sleazy apartment house in the Medina,

'where a Spanish queen with a toupee showed us into a wretched chamber

'for 15 dirham.

'I'll have another bit of that tomorrow.'

He'd disappear.

"Where have you been, Kenneth?" "Mind your business."

You weren't expecting to get any information.

It all happened out of sight. He could still say,

"I'm celibate. I don't do anything."

So you say, "Yes, Kenneth."

In Tangier, Williams could skirt the fringes

of a world that repelled and fascinated him.

It offered an escape from life at home,

and, as previously unpublished photographs reveal, somewhere he could relax and feel part of life.

'On all occasions, I fled to Morocco because of some inner despair.

'There wasn't a successful visit in the sense of spiritual replenishment

'but they all worked after a fashion because new rhythms were created and the pendulum must swing.

'It's when the pendulum is motionless or barely moving, that is the time of suicidal despair."

The relationship that helped create these new rhythms was cut short. On August the 9th, 1967,

Kenneth Halliwell beat Joe Orton's brains out with a hammer,

then took 22 sleeping tablets to kill himself.

The loss of his friends confirmed for Williams the danger of following Orton's sexual creed.

It is a homosexual entanglement that does destroy Joe. There's no question about that.

Halliwell's jealousy... His letter at the end says the answer to this can be found in the diaries.

The diaries of Joe were accounts of promiscuous sex.

Matron! No! Please! Oh, your hand!

Madam, I cannot. Not before a meal.

But one area of Williams' life was unfailingly successful -

his role as a Carry On star.

-S.E.T.

-S.E.T.?

Sex Enjoyment Tax.

Audiences loved their bawdy humour.

The series became the most successful in British cinema history.

Pinewood Studios turned out up to three a year,

most featuring Kenneth Williams.

Often what he gave in the theatre, people said, "We want less of this."

With the Carry Ons, "We want more of this." The audiences liked it.

He had a hit on his hands. We all would rather like a hit.

Do not worry. They will die the death of a thousand cuts.

-Oh, no! That's horrible.

-Nonsense, child. The British are used to cuts.

-Is this the type of part you like acting?

-I always do.

A touch of sadism. I'm good at being a bit nasty. Enjoy that very much.

They didn't want characters.

They wanted the essence of what you had.

So Kenny was like himself.

You wouldn't dare do anything to me and you know it!

He was very snooty, very grand...

very erudite.

I'll cut his pancreas out!

'He joked around, and he did that in the film.'

You're wasting your time! You can't do anything to frighten me!

Come on, then. Turn him over on his side.

-Right...

-No, no, no!

I'll sign! I'll sign!

He brought a restrained anarchy. You never knew what he would do next.

The others, you knew what they would do.

Are you all right, Doctor?

All right? Of course I'm all right.

'You watched Kenneth because at that time he could suddenly surprise you in a very ordinary scene.'

Hah! Yes! I'm fine!

Williams gave as much a performance off the set as he did on it.

He liked to gather people round him and tell stories.

The whole cast and all the staff

and even the public who were watching

would be waiting for him to set up his stall to tell stories.

He was like the Pied Piper.

Typical of Kenneth Williams' sense of humour.

The Mayoress of Wolverhampton came on the set one morning.

He was introduced to her and immediately went into a story that he does very well and tells everybody.

And there is a tape of it where he's playing it with Bernard Cribbins as the doctor,

and you may like to hear it.

-I must see you, Doctor.

-What's the trouble?

-CONTINUAL FARTING

-It's this wind...all the time. It's dreadful at work. I'm losing jobs.

-What is your job?

-Shorthand typist.

-PHRRRT

-Anything to do with diet?

-No.

-PHHHHRRRRRT

-I eat anything. Cornflakes and porridge.

-I'd better examine you.

-PHRRT, PHRRRRRT

There's no side-effects, are there?

-PHRRRRRRRRT

-Though there's the noise, there's no smell.

-Oh?

-Don't put that thing up my bum!

-No, I'm going to stick it up your nose.

If you think they don't smell, it's your nose wants seeing to.

That was mild.

There was little Williams wouldn't do to attract attention to himself.

'This Roman tunic I'm wearing in the film is really quite attractive, in white and gold.'

Give me a chance to look all sexy.

'I continually lift it up and expose my cock at the unit.

-'They're all disgusted and laugh it off.'

-Evening cock.

-Thanks, cock. I'll be ready.

'Quite a number of them have remarked, "Oh, Kenny! Not again! Put it away!" '

The restaurant was full of people.

-He used to say, "Hello, Giovanni. Nice to see you. Have you had a wank this morning?"

-Charmed, I'm sure.

But the impulse behind these antics was a desperate one. He could be appalled by his own behaviour,

but the reaction it generated filled an emotional gap in his life.

'The shameless way I behave - anything for a cheap laugh, dirty mimes and songs, obscene dialogue -

'and the person that I really am at home, with myself - it is almost a Jekyll and Hyde existence.

'The first half gives me guilt and remorse. The obvious remedy is to stop the lewd behaviour,

'but then I'm loath to relinquish the laughs and the crowd about me.

'I need them like other people need the affection of a partner.'

I remember Ted Smith. He used to stand at bars saying, "You're not getting nothing out of me, mate."

'All the comedians I've known have been deeply depressive people.

'You realise what despair'

was underneath the facade which they desperately kept it at bay with.

They felt it their duty to channel a private misery into comedy.

He was a prisoner perpetually

of the persona that he knew elicited the response of hilarity

and of...

approval.

There was something orgasmic about the effect he wanted in you hearing the story.

He wanted that above all - to build something to a great climax, a crescendo

of laughter and outrageousness.

And then he would fall silent.

I used to get concerned about him.

I'd try to say, "Are you happy?"

But he didn't want to talk about it. I was having counselling at one time.

He thought that was ghastly. It would take away his creativity and destroy something in him.

He felt it would stop him being what he was.

The central relationship in his life was still with his mother. In 1972 they moved into adjacent flats.

They went everywhere together, took holidays on cruise ships and shared a sense of humour.

She was funny. Great with repartee.

She had wonderful sayings of her own,

but she...she also used to borrow phrases from Kenneth.

Sometimes the dialogue between them

-was quite entertaining.

-They could be so uninhibited that friends were speechless.

When we first had Kenneth here with Louie, he was leaving

and said, "I must take her home now and rub her tits with olive oil." Talking like this to his mother.

And if you said, "Really, Kenneth, you can't talk like that to your mother,"

Louie would interrupt and say, "Don't you worry about my Ken."

The impressive store of general knowledge that Williams had acquired during his drive to educate himself

finally found a public outlet in 1968

on Just A Minute, the radio game show in which panellists talk

for one minute on a subject without hesitation, deviation or repetition.

The subject is stopping hiccups.

-Can you tell us something about that, starting now?

-One of the best tips I can give you

is to INHALE deeply

and then recite a long piece

such as, "The old order changeth, yielding place to new..."

RAPIDLY AND INCOHERENTLY RECITES

-BUZZ

-Peter Jones has challenged.

-You'd be better off with hiccups.

Before the programme started, Kenneth would go,

"Oh, I don't like all this. I'm a cult."

Stick his bottom right out. "I'm a cult. I'm the biggest cult in the whole of the BBC." And he'd sit down.

Kenneth always sat here. Freud there. Peter Jones there. Myself over there.

As the programme started and Freud might be talking in his very slow, lugubrious way...

"I took this dog out for a walk..."

Kenneth would roll his trousers up and flaunt his leg under Freud's nose

and then go over and nuzzle him up against his beard, stroking him.

Freud would still go on without being interrupted in that very slow way, looking straight ahead.

Now, Kenneth would be looking at his mother.

She always sat two rows back. AUDIENCE SHOUT

Oh, how lovely! Oh, wonderful!

However rude he might be, everything went to his mother.

-BUZZ

-He's ejaculating like mad there.

-Keeping a stiff upper lip. Starting now.

-I have tried this myself,

and inevitably one comes to resemble a ventriloquist's dummy.

Just A Minute was more than just a game show to Williams.

It was his chance to show a side of himself that he really cared about,

-and his anger at being contradicted was often real.

-It's the subject,

so we're supposed to discuss it, you fool!

What sound as if they start off as fantasy rages end up like real rages.

Those performances were quite strange.

Should this be broadcast? This is too authentic to be entertainment.

-It is a rope.

-He was giving an example of how this word...

It is a rope. It can't be a knot. What are you talking about? A knot's for tying, you great nit.

But in real life, Williams could be far ruder and far angrier.

A friend of mine from the country said,

"Oh, Kenneth, how nice to see you. What are you doing now?"

"What am I doing?"

"I happen to be appearing with Ingrid Bergman at the Cambridge Theatre, you bald-headed country bumpkin."

Even the public could receive a Williams outburst.

He related one such incident in a message left on an answer-phone.

-BEEP

-'I did Just A Minute yesterday.

'It was awful. A dreadful man came up onto the stage after and said,

' "Do you fulfil the strictures of Lord Reith that everything should be for the glory of Christianity?"

'I said, "Oh, shut up. People like you wear me out." He said, "Bless you, my son."

'I said, "Don't give me that crap."

' "I will pray for you." I said, "Don't bother. Your presence is embarrassing.

' "You cause nothing but vexation, like your religious friends." '

Williams grew to hate the attention he received in the street, regarding it as an intrusion into his privacy.

'I feel the bleeding going on inside.

'Every day, I die more consciously.

'The staring, the stopping in the street, the nudging of people,

'my fear of them, my hate of them,

'my desire to get away from their prying eyes.'

Although Williams shrank from public curiosity, his ego needed reassuring that he HAD been recognised.

To hear your lovely voice!

We went somewhere quiet.

In Fulham Road, I think. Because it was quiet, he said.

Must you play so blasted loud?!

It WAS quiet, until Kenneth started.

-Go on!

-We got halfway through the meal. Everybody there knew who it was.

Miss Fosdick looks quite gay.

And as soon as he'd got them all in his grasp,

he said, "Come on. I'm fed up with this. I can't stand these people." We left, halfway through the meal.

Williams owed his high public profile to the Carry On films,

but their success was trapping him in a stereotype.

His tragedy, in a way, was that he was too clever for the material.

He knew that he was doing a lot of inferior stuff among the good work.

-What do you want?

-Dandy Desmond.

-BOTH: That's him.

He was insulted by every script because he was a much better actor.

-Who is looking for Big Dick?

-BOTH: He is.

'I turned to the shooting script of the Carry On. If anything, it is worse than the previous version.

'It is appalling. It lacks verbal wit. It lacks comic situation. It lacks any credible characters.

'It is a Carry On.'

Anybody who starts with Orson Welles must have a sense of what's possible.

And then to finish up in, you know, Carry On Number 42 is not really a career move upwards.

In 1971,

six years after Loot,

Williams returned to the theatre desperate to wipe out the memory of that flop and re-establish himself.

He starred with Ingrid Bergman and Joss Ackland in Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion,

which did good box office but had mixed reviews.

Then came a bittersweet comedy, My Fat Friend. The play opened well.

Williams' performance was much praised. He was ecstatic, as a letter he wrote at the time reveals.

'The joy, the utter vindication of all the suffering and dreary days

'when you see one rewarding notice which treats you seriously and talks not only about your comic persona

'but about your ability to create pathos as well.'

But even in a success, Williams couldn't prevent his comic persona from taking over.

The play became for him a sort of straitjacket in which he wasn't allowed to break out and be himself

and be as funny as he could be.

What he wanted to do more than anything was to contact his audience.

Contacting his audience meant only one thing.

Kenneth Williams the comedy actor became Kenneth Williams, solo turn.

We'd be in a duologue here, and perhaps they weren't laughing as they should do out there.

Kenneth's getting very worried, so he leaves me and dances down in this little sidling way.

I knew what was going to happen. He'd turn to the audience and say, "Hello. How are you?"

The house would go up, and he was there for about four minutes. Little quips and jokes, laugh-building.

He felt better. And so back he'd come as if nothing had happened.

And he'd turn to me and he'd say, "Your turn."

Williams left the production on the grounds of ill health, causing an early closure.

-Same place?

-Yes.

-Apart from directing two Joe Orton plays in the '80s,

he'd little contact with the theatre again. His career seemed stalled.

When Round The Horne ended in 1969 the BBC had tried developing new TV and radio programmes around him,

but most, like The Kenneth Williams Show, were short-lived.

The high camp style was being done by others,

as his agent would explain.

'Peter Eade telephoned.

'We talked about why there had been no offers of work. He said that the Grayson show is a crib of my stuff.'

I shouted, "Cut off its tentacles!" Well, the lifeguard was deaf...

'Inman is doing the same thing.'

Yes, I'm free, Captain Peacock.

'It hadn't hit me before. Of course! They've found other people to do it, and cheaper people, in every sense.'

It's all done in the best possible taste.

He was overtaken. He was furious with Kenny Everett. Kenny Everett went a bit further than Kenneth.

I'm really wanted by big people... and so many times.

There were people that sort of overtook Kenneth in that field,

and towards the end he was a bit old-fashioned.

-RAPIDLY:

-I am applying for a job as a sports commentator. I am walking...

The waspishness increased. He became more difficult.

People were frightened of him. They couldn't find a vehicle for him.

-How's that?

-Very good indeed.

Unfortunately, we don't have a vacancy for a sports commentator.

I think he felt the shadows closing over him.

Oh, are you kidding?

But Williams held the shadows at bay once more. He began doing for the public what he'd been doing

for years in private - making people laugh by talking about himself.

The '70s and '80s saw the heyday of the TV chat show. Williams was king.

-His way with words is legendary.

-The most English of Englishmen.

-A wasp with adenoids.

-A brilliant talker, unfailingly funny.

Hurry up! Stop dragging it out!

-Shall we bring him on?

-Please do.

The sublime Mr Kenneth Williams.

APPLAUSE

Kenneth Williams.

Mr Kenneth Williams. APPLAUSE

'Kenneth Williams was God's gift to the talk show host.'

He was a huge show-off, and he loved making people A: shocked, B: laugh.

When I first worked with Maggie Smith we went to Fortnum and Mason. She was after a particular bra.

A grand assistant in Fortnum's... It was heavy carpeting, soft pile.

You hardly heard as you entered.

She said, "I have that bra. Seven guineas." Maggie said, "Seven guineas for a bra?

"Cheaper to have your tits off."

He'd a fabulous memory for stories.

He had a gift of invention - if he didn't have a good story, he'd make one up. And he was a wonderful mimic.

I was in a dressing room.

A knock at the door. I said, "Who is it?" "Noel." I thought it was the stage manager. "Piss off."

Instead of which,

the door opened and Noel Coward came in.

I was sitting on this chamber pot.

I had water with which I was cleaning myself.

I shot up, and in shooting up I upset the po, and the water went all over the place.

He said, "What on Earth are you doing?"

I said, "Washing. I was told by the surgeon after my operation that I should never use toilet paper,

"but always completely wash it."

He said, "I do understand. Have you read my book Present Indicative? I discuss that operation - piles."

And I said, "No, no. I didn't have that.

"I didn't have that. No, my operation was for papili. I had papili, you see."

And he said, "Papili? My dear, it's an island in the South Seas."

And, in fact, it is.

Williams didn't just tell stories. He used the chat show as a political platform.

The idealistic young Labour voter had become a right-winger

and, as strike action intensified in the mid-'70s, a union-basher.

Yet they all get worked up over a couple of pound in their pay packet.

If unions are really socialistic and care about their fellow man,

why can't they march about something like that, instead of about a pound for themselves?

-You don't do a job just for what you get. You do it because you want to do it well.

-Kenneth, that's crap.

I mean, I'm sorry. I really...

-I've never been so insulted!

-LAUGHTER

Williams' outburst caused a stir.

He was invited back to argue his case with a heavyweight adversary, trade union leader Jimmy Reid.

Williams couldn't resist the challenge and entered the contest determined to come out on top.

'Kenneth was competitive. He regarded anybody else on the show with him'

as somebody who wanted to steal his thunder. He'd put them down.

'I said to Kenneth, "Give me a bit of sound level," before the show started.'

He stood up and declaimed this poem to the assembled staff

and looked challengingly at Jimmy Reid, who said, "Was that Yeats?"

Kenneth said, "As a matter of fact, it was, yes."

I said to Jimmy Reid, "Jimmy, you give me a bit of voice-over." He said, "I've got a poem for you."

He did this extraordinary poem. He said to Kenneth, "Who wrote that?"

Kenneth said, "I didn't know." Jimmy said, "I did."

I've never seen Kenneth as discomfited during an interview as then.

'I think it's the worst performance he ever did on a talk show.'

The working man's caught in the same trap. "Ask more for your house. You won't get it unless you ask more."

So he's caught in the same trap, the ordinary man who owns a house.

-Not particularly.

-He is.

-I'm telling you.

-He's caught in a trap because...

Talk show performances mattered to Williams. He was doing little else.

In 1979 he played in the last of the Carry On films, with few regrets.

-I will make you love me if it's the last thing I do!

-Aaargh!

As the Carry On films reached their climax, they became caricatures of themselves, and coarsened.

The last, which Kenneth thought was appalling, was Carry On Emmanuelle.

He was embarrassed to have done it

but he did it out of loyalty to the team.

Aaargh!

HIS SCREAM FADES

Film work had dried up, stage work had dried up.

Kenneth Williams Presents on TV, or whatever it might be, that had gone.

He had become that most forlorn of creatures - a person who existed because of game shows and talk shows.

So from an enormous potential, he had reduced himself, boxed himself into a corner.

In a way, the same thing, I think, happened with his private life.

He alienated his friends as the years went by by outrageous behaviour.

I remember being in the sitting room

and he'd kept the table on a roar for hours but he had to go further.

He dropped his trousers. "The bum is hanging down in pleats." Exposing it.

I think in terms of relationships he'd painted himself into a corner,

and fewer people were phoning back.

The one relationship that had always worked was also disintegrating, as old age took its toll on Louie.

'I'm virtually a prisoner,

'chained to this elderly derelict,

'reminded of geriatric problems - the stained mattress, the cigarette burns on carpets and chairs,

'the conversational repetition.'

Kenneth himself wasn't a well man.

Stomach ulcers, piles, bowel disorders - all contributed to physical pain he found hard to take.

If something is misery-making, turn it. Talk about it. Make it amusing.

Make it creative. Explain why the illness - the malaise - occurs. And you can do that with comedy.

He was taking things that were personal and painful to him -

his ailments, his strange voice, his curious manner - and almost sending them up. Well, not almost.

He was inviting you to laugh at him while telling you something true about himself.

"Mr Williams, you have...

"a spastic colon."

-LAUGHTER

-I thought I'd come into money.

But he would pay a price for this public exposure.

'The fact is, on these chat shows I've been eating at myself for years, just living off body fat.

'People say, "All he does is tell those old stories we've heard before

' "with his usual lavatory gags and his camp blether.

-' "Pathetic." '

-He felt he was excavating himself in chat shows -

giving chunks of himself away. He felt there wasn't much left of him.

Williams' diaries record he'd mused on suicide from his earliest days.

Late in life, the idea of putting an end to his suffering obsessed him.

-What? Like killing yourself?

-Yes, I put stuff down about suicide.

How one would go about it. The best method. Looking back, it's often amusing.

-Why would you want to kill yourself?

-One would think it at the time because of a low state of morale.

One does write something down which is practical in terms of how to go about it.

'Counted my capsules of poison. I have over 30, enough to kill me.

'Just have to work out the time and the place.'

A fortnight before he died I saw him near Broadcasting House. We stood on a traffic island. He was distressed,

and he looked grey. Kenneth's face in repose, sometimes, was an incredibly tragic face.

He would go very sallow and...

I was preoccupied by my own things. I remember thinking, "I should ring him."

But I didn't.

On March 21st, 1988, Williams' diary says that he attempted an overdose,

but after taking two barbiturates couldn't go through with it.

On April 14th, he wrote what was to be his final entry in his diary.

'Had meal with Lou at 5.30.

'Saw the news. Watched the dreary saga of murder and mayhem.

'By 6.30, pain in the back was pulsating as it's never done before.

'So this, plus the stomach trouble,

'combines to torture me.

'Oh, what's the bloody point?'

Next day, Louie went into her son's flat and found him dead in his bed.

The comedy actor Kenneth Williams has died at the age of 62. He was found dead at his flat in London...

He died from an overdose of barbiturates, causing speculation in the press.

But the coroner couldn't be sure it wasn't an accident and recorded an open verdict.

I believe that he took his life. I don't know that for sure, but I believe so.

He... He could not find... anything worthy in himself at all.

He felt that his life...was dross.

SHERIDAN MORLEY: At the end of the day,

he died of frustration - sexual, social, theatrical, professional.

He wasn't doing what he wanted to do.

Left neatly stacked in Williams' bookcase was his final legacy -

the 41 volumes that documented his innermost thoughts about himself and everyone who came into his orbit,

candid and uncensored.

-You don't want them published after your death?

-Mm.

-I'd have thought you'd want your diaries published

-after your death.

-Oh, I see. After death?

-Yes.

-I beg your pardon. After death, yes. One wouldn't mind that at all.

Wouldn't you worry about being catty?

I wouldn't care at all then. One would be out of the way!

I wouldn't mind them saying, "He was a rotter." I wouldn't mind if I was out of the way.

He knew that he'd been a strange and dislocated personality all his life.

Since a child, he'd known that. He'd never managed quite to puzzle it out.

But I think he wanted to leave the evidence so that it was there on the table for us to see and sort out.

-IMPASSIONED SINGING

-# Ou est la plume de ma tante?

LAUGHTER

# C'est la vie

# Ma crepe suzette... #

I feel sad for him that his life wasn't as happy for him

as he made it for all of us.

As soon as you saw him, as soon as you heard him, your heart lifted,

you broke into a smile and sometimes into a belly laugh.

He had the gift of creating laughter, but he didn't have the gift of creating it for himself.

# Par Avion

# Petula Clark

# Fiancee, ensemble

# Lorgnette

# Lingerie

# Et deux toilettes

# Gauloises cigarettes

# Entourage

# Ma crepe suzette... #

Bye-bye, and thank you. It's been really wonderful for you to have me.