Pearson (b. 1918) A character actor with a wonderful career in meek and understated roles, he shared with Kenneth and Maggie Smith the success of The Private Ear and The Public Eye. His family became a domestic refuge for KW.
Bill Pertwee (b. 1926) The surviving doyen of Dad’s Army (as Warden Hodges), he had been the bits-and-pieces man in the casts of Round the Horne and Beyond Our Ken. He also participated in three Carry On films.
Paul Richardson (b. 1944) Kenneth’s friend and neighbour at Marlborough House for sixteen years, he was left 50 per cent of KW’s belongings, including his diaries and letters. He is currently Technical Director of Sadler’s Wells.
Peter Rogers (b. 1914) The producer of the Carry On films, who entered the film industry as a writer of religious subjects for the Rank Organisation, still works at the Pinewood Studios.
Jeremy Swan His vast list of credits in children’s programming include Jackanory and Rentaghost, of which Christopher Biggins has said: ‘It was all due to the most brilliant director-producer – a mad Irishman called Jeremy Swan, and it was he who instigated all the completely insane stuff like the pantomime horse. We used to cry with laughter.’
Barry Took (1928–2002) Best known to the public as a quiz chairman and TV presenter, Took had collaborated with Merriman on the first seasons of Beyond Our Ken, and then co-wrote Round the Horne with Marty Feldman. He later employed Kenneth as a voice-over artist.
Michael Whittaker (b. 1938) A businessman – unusually in Kenneth’s circle – he is acknowledged in the diaries as ‘best of people and best of my friends’ because of his unfaltering loyalty and kindness in caring for Kenneth and Louie.
Louie Williams (1901–91) Kenneth’s mother and greatest fan was seemingly ever-present at his recordings, particularly in radio. She had given birth to Ken at 11 Bingfield Street, Islington, off the Caledonian Road, close to what is now the ‘Cally’ swimming pool.
Pat Williams (d. 1994) Kenneth’s sister – the full circumstances of her birth, could not be revealed during her lifetime. The allusion Kenneth made to the matter in his diaries did not appear in the published version.
Dennis Main Wilson (1924–97) The screenonline website, developed by the British Film Institute, describes the producer of Hancock’s Half Hour as ‘arguably the most important and influential of all comedy producers/directors in British radio and television’. He was responsible for getting The Goon Show on the air.
Barbara Windsor MBE (b. 1937) Even though it feels like it should be more, she appeared in only nine Carry On films, most notably in Carry On Camping where her defective bra and Kenneth’s immortal line ‘Matron, take them away!’ has proved the most used clip of the entire series.
Introduction by Russell Davies
‘On boarding the plane I was stuck next to this woman who asked: “They all call you Mister Williams…are you famous? Should I know you?” I told her “No – I’m nobody dear…just got a yard and a half in Who’s Who, that’s all”’
Diary, 13 April 1983
It is possible that we already know, or think we know, more about Kenneth Williams than we’ve ever learned about any previous British actor, classical or comical. Yet there is much more to be known, as this book will show. The public appetite for intimate details of his life, which has not diminished in the twenty years since his death, was created by him. Williams knew that his was a most unusual, possibly unique, personality type, and the glimpses he publicly offered of himself – those half-hinted confessions and protestations of celibacy – were not simply made as teases to keep his public interested. He himself wanted to know, I think, how people would regard him if they came to know more of the truth of who he was. To that end he would sneak out fragments of his authentic self. An opportunity was lost in his autobiography, Just Williams, the kind of carefully judged performance that could have been read on Radio 4 without expurgation. A franker book might have helped him, and us.
As Kenneth was aware, the world from which he disappeared in 1988 was already changing quickly. But he had never been ashamed of his own retro tastes – the Victorian poetry, the music from Buxtehude to Fauré but not much further – and with his health restored he might have found the energy to convince an increasingly shallow public of the worth of his ruminative pursuits. As an 82 year old in 2008, he could have held his place in the media firmament alongside surviving contemporaries like Sir David Attenborough and David Jacobs, his fellow-broadcasters, and his old friend Stanley Baxter, all born in 1926. (Indeed, Kenneth was almost exactly two months older than Her Majesty the Queen.)
Parts of his comedy world ought by now to be in ruins. The Carry On tradition was insular even in its own day, laden with funny foreigners and semi-inflatable, perpetually shocked, seaside-postcard women. But we’ve heard so much about the cast members and their off-screen interactions (which have even been dramatized in a National Theatre play, Terry Johnson’s Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick) that we now read the on-screen narrative twice as it goes along: once in its own silly terms, and once in terms of the ways the actors are surviving the material, and in some cases one another. By contrast, the campery of the Kenneth Horne radio performances seems almost uncorroded, and has lately become a mainstay of BBC7, the digital-radio archival network. And though the parlour game Just a Minute has now been running longer without Williams than with him, one can still hear younger panellists putting into practice the lessons he taught, under the guidance of David Hatch, about playing the game ‘outrageously’. The extent to which his career relied on the continuity of BBC work has perhaps been underestimated before, but it is thoroughly explored in these pages.
This book began, in a sense, at the end, with the death of Kenneth Williams, so it’s with that topic that we do begin. In my view, his death itself is not very mysterious – for debatability it’s not in the class of, say, Robert Maxwell’s demise – yet it does continue to be debated. Kenneth was much loved, in both a show business and a personal sense. Many of his friends and fans will forever argue hotly against the notion of his suicide, and in favour of misadventure. Meanwhile the open verdict which the Coroner actually returned stands as a perpetual invitation to reconsider the case.
But some important opinions have never been heard. Neither in 1988, nor in 1993 when my selection from his diaries was published, was any comment made by the friends named in Kenneth’s will: his agent, Michael Anderson; his companion on cultural travels, the businessman Michael Whittaker; his neighbour, Paul Richardson; or his godson, Robert Chidell. The world knew nothing of these gentlemen at the time, and they very reasonably preferred to keep it that way. Now, thanks to the persuasion of Wes Butters, they have spoken, enabling us to present the fullest picture of the circumstances of Kenneth’s death that posterity can hope for. It seemed unlikely that the pathologist employed on the case would add much detail to that picture, especially as he now works in New Zealand; but again, Wes’s initiative prevailed, and Dr Pease has contributed a remarkably vivid account of his involvement.
To understand the participation of the Chidell family in Kenneth’s life, it’s necessary to know something of the history of the actor John Vere, a friend of his from the 1950s and a fellow cast-member of Tony Hancock’s TV show. Robert Chidell is John Vere’s great-nephew, though John had been dead fifteen years by the time Robert
