at his house afterwards. Stanley’s wife Moira did the catering.’
‘When we arrived there was a choir and about a dozen people, close friends. It was a moving service’
The press was taken by surprise. ‘Secret Funeral for Carry On Ken’, reported the Sun. ‘The 30-minute service, held on Thursday, was so hush-hush that many of the staff at London’s St Marylebone Crematorium did not know it was taking place.’ This article appeared on the Saturday, so the secrecy had indeed worked. Not even those who attended the service were quite sure what was happening.
Pat Williams: ‘All we knew was that the car was going to pick us up at 4 o’clock. We’d said no flowers, because Ken hated flowers. We only had one wreath from the two of us and it looked so bare.’
Paul Richardson: ‘It was a blustery day and nobody knew where we were going. Pat, Lou, Barbara [Windsor] and I got into this car. We drove and drove and I thought, “I know where we’re going, we’re going to Marylebone Crematorium!” Pat said, “How do you know?” So I said, “We’re going that way!” Sure enough, when we arrived there was a choir and about a dozen people, close friends. It was a moving service. He was cremated and his ashes were spread over the lawns.’
Michael Whittaker: ‘I came back from Italy for the funeral. Many of his close friends were there. It was all rather secret. We had a lunch afterwards and that’s where I met Dame Maggie Smith, whom Kenneth was always very proud of and how she, more than once, credited Kenneth with a lot of her acting ability. He thought the world of her. I do remember asking about another famous actress, a very well-known person, what he thought of her. “Oh, very rep!” he replied.’
Paul Richardson: ‘Pat was in bits, and in actual fact, at the funeral at Marylebone Crematorium, she was to my left and as the coffin was leaving, Pat let out this yelp. Louie turned to me and said, “What’s wrong with that silly bitch?”’
Michael Anderson: ‘His sister was a bit of a drama queen, I think. She put on quite a performance during the funeral. Her attitude was like being at an Italian funeral almost, she did make quite a fuss showing she cared. His mother bore up very well.’
Pat Williams: ‘When we first came back here, Lou saw the photo of her with Ken and started crying, but I said, “You mustn’t be like that. We’re not going to take it down. We must talk about him and keep him in the open.”’
The clearing of Kenneth’s flat was a particularly wrenching experience. His intimates knew how spartan his living conditions had looked, so they were prepared for a cheerless spectacle; but at least there had been, during their visits, the bracing presence of Kenneth himself to offset the bleakness of the ambience. Now only the bleakness was left.
Paul Richardson: ‘It was terrible to go into Ken’s flat so soon after his death with a Mr Spanton, the executor of the will, and have to go through his personal belongings. In fact it was very upsetting. Angela Chidell went with a friend of hers to clear the flat because I couldn’t face it.’
Angela Chidell: ‘Going into Kenneth’s flat one last time was difficult. I believe his sister was asked if she would like to clear the flat and she didn’t want to, and Paul [Richardson] didn’t want to, so for some reason it fell upon me to do it. So over two days my best friend Jenny Copsey [daughter of Lord Healey] and I, with our cars, ferried things back and forth, odds and ends. Most of the furniture had already gone, things that Kenneth’s sister wanted. It was just a question of cleaning up. Most of the things I put in black bags and I simply got rid of. Some of the clothes went to the Salvation Army because his sister had said he was very fond of them and we had a good place at Wood Green so a lot of them went there.’
Robert Chidell: ‘We went round to his flat and walked around, picking things up and taking things. It was all a bit strange. Paperweights, lots of pens that I’ve still got. I was just taken to this old flat, it looked like an old person’s flat to be honest. It was tiny, tiny. A very simple place. It felt quite dark, it felt as though it hadn’t been decorated for a long time. It felt quite sad in a way…One of his suits fitted me perfectly when I was a teenager for a short while, because he was super slight. It was a tiny fitted suit. I loved it and remember being gutted when I grew out of it.’
Angela Chidell: ‘As I walked around the flat I saw photographs and personal things of ours which brought home yet again that the closeness I felt to him was real, and wasn’t imaginary or a celebrity thing. It’s so easy to think you can attach yourself to people just because they’re famous. It was very sad. All these records of wonderful music of Albinoni, Schumann, Beethoven, Bach, organ recitals, Albert Schweitzer, all the great pianists and autographed copies of Jorge Bolet, programmes of Liszt. But that was the other side of Kenneth. He was an entertainer but he was a quiet man, which is so true of entertainers, isn’t it?
‘The second day, clearing up, I don’t know…I just travelled through it doing what I had to do and then closed the door. And that was that.’
Man of Action, a BBC Radio 3 show which showcased his record collection, produced by Patrick Lambert, 21 December 1976: ‘This week the actor Kenneth Williams introduces his personal choice of records.’
There remained the unpleasant matter of the inquest. It was held in mid-June, two months after Kenneth’s death. Startlingly, his GP, Dr Carlos Clarke, testified that during the previous November he had given his patient 100 sleeping tablets, but not the kind that had killed him. But the most important testimony came from the London Hospital pathologist, Dr Christopher Pease, whose initial, inconclusive findings led to a second battery of tests, some of which had a bearing on Kenneth’s general state of health. Dr Pease now resides in New Zealand, but remembers the case with impressive clarity:
Dr Christopher Pease: ‘I was fully aware of Kenneth’s fame and had watched all of the Carry On series. As a doctor and pathologist, however, we are trained from a very early stage not to allow our own emotions to interfere with the task at hand. On that day Kenneth was one of fifteen autopsies I performed in several different areas in and around London, so my examination needed to be precise and comprehensive for future reference. I was particularly aware of the contention around Kenneth’s sexuality and made a specific decision not to examine parts of Kenneth’s anatomy which were not relevant to his death, choosing to perpetuate his privacy in that area.
‘The pills he took were Mandrax; these are a mixture of amphetamine and barbiturate. I have no idea how many pills he took. Kenneth was known to have a large collection of various medicaments and drugs, all of which were labelled and available for him to self-medicate when he chose to do so. I think he was known to be rather hypochondriacal. The bottle containing the remaining Mandrax tabs was unlabelled, in stark contrast to all of his other bottles. The levels of amphetamine and barbiturate in his blood were not a fatal dose of either compound, but in combination were lethal.
‘After the inquest I was besieged with reporters, almost all of whom misquoted me (apart from the Sun, as far as I remember). When asked if I thought that he had killed himself, as the Coroner had left an open verdict, my reply was, “It is most unlikely that an adult, if compos mentis, would take an accidental overdose.” There had been no evidence that he wasn’t, despite his fear of surgery for his gastric ulcer in the next week or two.’
