“Oh, he loved showing his bum. Loved it. He joked about his bottom hanging in pleats.” - Carry on Emmannuelle co-star Suzanne Danielle
It is the centenary today of a uniquely talented man - the nation's favourite archly camp comedian, frustrated thespian, raconteur and wit, any chat-show host's favourite guest, perfect reader of children's books on Jackanory, a man of contradictions in temperament and mood between his public and private life, subversive yet troubled and full of self-loathing. Many have tried to pin down what exactly it was that made him so great, and an article by Ryan Gilbey in Friday's Guardian certainly gives us some great insights from people who knew him, or were inspired by him.
"As a child, I connected with his outsiderness. Rather than trying to fit in, he went in the opposite direction. Not only did he not apologise for being different, but he was queer in every sense, truly at odds with the world in which he found himself.He regretted not being taken seriously. The great tragedy is he did something enormously serious through his comedy, which he could never realise or acknowledge. He wasn’t seen as an activist, and would probably hate to have been. What we sometimes forget, though, is that radical action comes in many forms.”
- comedian Tom Allen
On Round the Horne, Williams and Hugh Paddick played the camp duo "Julian and Sandy", whose banter... consisted entirely of double entendres and the gay slang Polari. A prohibition on explicit language facilitated some of the filthiest innuendoes ever heard on British radio... First broadcast in 1965, two years before the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality between males over 21 in England and Wales, the sketches were subversive as well as funny.
“The whole thing was outrageously rude and queer. In a subtle, mainstream way, he changed attitudes hugely in this country." - Tom Allen
“He would be chatting about something intellectual and high-class, then suddenly be talking about his bumhole. “That lent him a sort of danger and spontaneity. He’s like a commedia dell’arte character, or the fool or trickster in mythology – he delights in pricking pomposity and turning expectations upside down.It’s about saying: ‘This is what is respectable. But here is the murky stuff underneath.’ There was nobody better at doing that than him. What David Lynch did for America, Kenneth Williams did for Britain, but in the form of light entertainment.”
- actor Michael Sheen
The biographer Roger Lewis credits him as one of the sources of Maggie Smith’s performance in Downton Abbey. The desiccated, withering Dowager Countess of Grantham, Lewis wrote, amounts to “Lady Bracknell as played in drag by Williams”.
In short, Kenneth williams was a genius. There will never, ever, be anyone else quite like him.
Kenneth Charles Williams (22th February 1926 – 15th April 1988)
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