The glory lay in the voice: Kenneth Williams

The Versatile Voice of Kenneth Williams: A Centenary Celebration

BBC RADIO 4 EXTRA

Kenneth Williams (1926-1988), the subject of his inspired day-long showcase, would have reached his one hundredth birthday last week. I came upon him once as a schoolboy in a Norwick department store, pen poised above a stack of copies of his new book, waiting to greet a line of customers who, mysteriously, had yet to arrive. No doubt the incident would have fuelled the flame of insecurity – sometimes damped down, on other occasions flaring up like a blacksmith’s range – that hung over his professional life.

And his personal life as well. One of the best bits of The Versatile Voice of Kenneth Williams (22 February and BBC Sounds) is a brief interview with Ken Bruce, who encouraged by comedy historian Wes Butters, reminisced about a chat he had conducted with Williams on Scottish radio back in 1984.

“Clearly a tormented person,” Bruce recalls, while also drawing attention to the “strange mixture of erudition and vulgarity” that characterised both the subject’s radio work and his dealings with other people.

Not, of course, that Williams didn’t sometimes let brief glimpses of the personal life out into the public domain. A rerun of The Secret Life of Kenneth Williams, from 1971, in which he masquerades as a special agent, posed the question: why has he never married? The Streets of London, from Christmas 1980, in which Williams, having spent the previous year’s holiday being dragged around Savernake Forest by nature gurus Percy Edwards and Johnny Morris, got his revenge by escorting his tormentors on a metropolitan tour, even began in his Bloomsbury flat.

Chez Williams turned to out be a couple of rooms: he lived frugally. The London walk, sustained by a 1932 guidebook, brought out his erudite side – he proved to be highly knowledgeable about architecture – and also his spiritual interests. Holy Trinity Church in Marylebone had been colonised by the SPCK, he informed his companions – “That’s the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. And we should have a lot more of it.”

Other bygone appearances on display include an episode of The Law Game – panellists were invited to comment on a series of dramatised crimes – from 1988, and one of his starring roles on Just a Minute. As ever, and as in the Carry On film franchise, whose saucy comedy Williams reckoned beneath him, the glory lies in the voice, which, as Bruce notes, brings off its effects by swinging both ways: nasal RP for the panel games, innuendo-ridden cockney for the smut. It would have been nice to hear some of the duologues with Hugh Paddick from Round the Horne, in which Williams’ Polari-inflected campness turned practically surreal.