have dinner parties and he’d come and sit there, with the great and the good, and the first thing he’d talk about would be piles! After a few drinks he’d be dropping his trousers to show you his “bum hanging down in pleats”. It’s an awful thing to say, but people who become depressed become bores. It’s a self-fulfilling thing: the more depressed you get the more boring you are. It’s the same with hypochondria: the more you bang on about it, the less interested people are. So whom did Kenneth have? Frankly, he had his mother who had her own concerns, he had his sister, a handful of wonderful friends like Michael Whittaker, who were people of infinite patience, sweetness and kindness, who tolerated him and went along with him. But a lot of his show-business friends and colleagues had their own lives to run and didn’t have the time for any of this. I saw him less and less towards the end because he became more and more demanding. The last communication I had from him, shortly before he died, was a postcard of him looking into a periscope, and it simply said, “Is there still life in SW13? Are you there?”’
The new passport arrived. The photograph certainly makes me look awful: and old. What a going-off was here! It is obvious from the ruinous nature of the face, that the qualities in one do affect the looks of one. In my younger photographs, the lips are generous and the eyes wide with hope: now the lips are thin and pursed with the ungenerous nature showing thro’ them, and the eyes are narrow with distrust and scepticism and the lines round them show the tired ennui with which it’s all viewed.’ (Diary, 8 March 1975)
It wouldn’t be surprising if, by 1988, a kind of general fatigue had crept into Kenneth’s friendships and acquaintanceships, on both sides. Ill-health, previously thought of as an amusing sub-current in his conversation, had loomed much more boringly large, and it’s quite possible that he had begun to bore himself. Yet nobody felt actually alarmed by the deterioration in his morale. Only afterwards did little psychological signposts, like this one, point the way to what might have been seen coming.
Michael Whittaker : ‘What made me think twice in 1988 was that every time I would go on holiday with my other friends I would telephone him and say, “I can’t be with you and Louie on Sunday, Kenneth, because I’m going away.” His answer was always the same, I don’t think he meant it: “I hope the car breaks down, I hope it rains. Lou and I left behind!” and bang would go the telephone. After a time this was the standard response. But in 1988 I knew he’d got ulcers, had given up cigarettes and was pretty low-spirited, and I telephoned him and said, “You know I’m away next Wednesday, Kenneth?” I thought, Here we go. He’ll say the usual and bang the receiver down. But he actually said, “Yes, I’ll be thinking of you. Think of me, won’t you?” I said, “What? What about the car breaking down? And what about it raining?” “No, no, you just think of me. I’ll be thinking of you.” All the way to Italy I was thinking, Why after eight years has he been so untypically concerned and polite?’
Paul Richardson: ‘He died on the Thursday and I last saw him on the Tuesday, very briefly. He seemed fine. He looked slightly drawn but he was his usual chirpy self. “I’m just going into her!” he said, which meant Louie’s for his tea. “Don’t forget about Friday.” So I said that I’d see him then. “Do I need to ring you up and remind you?” he said, but I said no, I’d be there. And of course it never happened.’
The scene in Louie’s flat, the night he died, was very much as usual, except that the TV session with his mum ended early for Kenneth. Lou herself recalled it starkly for readers of Woman’s Own:
Louie Williams: ‘We were watching television and he said to me, “I’ve got a rotten pain. I think I’ll have an early night.” I think it was only quarter to nine. I said, “Ta-ta. Hope you feel better in the morning,” because we were having our feet done at the chiropodist the next morning. And he said to me, “Don’t forget. Be ready for half past ten.”’
Paul Richardson: ‘I’m not a religious person but on the night of the 14th I was lying in my bed and I suddenly looked up and – this is absolutely true – I saw this figure. All I could see was the head and down to the stomach. And I looked. And it was someone grinning at me. And I pushed at it and said, “Go away, go away!” And it just disappeared. The next morning I had to go and get something at John Lewis’s, and I came out of the flat about half past eight and I always looked up at Kenny’s window, and I thought, That’s strange. His curtains are closed. Now that is odd…‘
Experiencing the same puzzlement as the breakfast hour passed without communication, Kenneth’s mother went into his flat.
Louie Williams: ‘He was still in bed. I touched his hand and it was cold. I said, “Ken, Ken, you all right?” And there was no answer. Then I called the porter. I was trying to keep calm. I didn’t realize what had happened. The porter said, “He’s dead.” But I didn’t believe it. I thought he was just asleep. But then Pat came and she told me he was dead.’
Paul Richardson: ‘And I walked to John Lewis’s, and I was going to go from John Lewis on to Sadler’s Wells to do something at the theatre, and then come back and meet Ken for lunch at one o’clock. Something told me to turn back. It was as though I was being pushed. So I went to John Lewis’s after about an hour and half, and as I came back and crossed Euston Road from Great Portland Street all I could see outside were cameras, police, people milling around. I said to myself, “That’s Ken. He’s dead.” When I got to the block the porter, old Mr Dunthorpe, said to one of the press, “That’s his mate there,” and then turned to me and said, “Ken’s gone.” I just got into my flat and wept.’
Michael Whittaker: ‘When I eventually got to the house in Italy the hostess said would I go upstairs because there was a message for me from London, and it was that Kenneth had been found dead. When Louie had found him dead she’d telephoned my office. Luckily my colleague Joan comforted her and I think, in retrospect, a woman offering sympathy to another woman was probably the best thing.’
Michael Anderson: ‘The porter from Marlborough House rang me and said, “I’m the porter where Kenneth Williams lives and I’ve got very bad news. I’m afraid he’s dead.” Well, that was a terrible shock; I had no idea that this might happen.’
Angela Chidell: ‘At the time Robert was at a friend’s house, and I first heard about it on the evening news so I collected him, I didn’t want him to hear the news on his own. I brought him home and we were all shocked and very surprised. We all shed tears because we all loved him very much.’
Gyles Brandreth: ‘There is no doubt in my mind that Kenneth committed suicide. There is the end of the diary – “Oh, what’s the bloody point?” – but there’s also my knowledge: the moment I’d heard he was dead I assumed it was suicide. My mind went straight back to us sitting in my dining room and us getting to the point in his book where he wrote about his father’s death. Kenneth talked about suicide. He referred to his stash of poison to me more than once.’
In due course these matters would be considered by the Coroner. Those public proceedings would be hard to bear, but they were for another day. The struggle to maintain daily life had to begin at once.
Paul Richardson: ‘Pat had arrived and she had taken Lou back to the flat in Camden. I saw her the following Sunday and she was remarkably composed, it was quite extraordinary. We talked and the vicar was there, and we did a blessing with Lou and Pat. Stanley Baxter and Gordon Jackson turned up and we all had to introduce ourselves because Ken used to pigeonhole everybody so you never met anyone at all.’
Michael
