And now a cautionary tale sung by Rambling Sid Rumpo | Wilders Security Forums And now a cautionary tale sung by Rambling Sid Rumpo Discussion in ' ten-forward ' started by toploader , Sep 6, 2005 . Thread Status: Joe, he was a young cordwangler, Munging greebles he did go, And he loved a bogler's daughter By the name of Chiswick Flo. Vain she was and like a grusset Though her gander parts were fine, But she sneered at his cordwangle As it hung upon the line. So he stole a woggler's mooly For to make a wedding ring, But the Bow Street Runners caught him And the judge said "He will swing." Oh, they hung him by the postern, Nailed his mooly to the fence For to warn all young cordwanglers That it was a grave offence. There's a moral to this story, Though your cordwangle be poor, Keep your hands off other's moolies, For it is against the law.

thank you Sid - i'm sure we are all the wiser for that sage advice 2,743 I spent more of my time with John Peel and Home Truths..but did get bent at times with the other stuff. Well hello me dearioes....Now let us all burst forth together, so grundle your parts and away we go... Rambling Syd Rumpo was created by Barry Took and Marty Feldman for Round The Horne, the BBC radio comedy which ran between 1965 and 1968. Barry Took noted that their inspiration for the character came in part from real-life folk singers such as Bob Dylan and Julie Felix. Although at first many of the words may appear vulgar, most were in fact completely made up, the entire thing being a send up of folk songs and sea shanty's which seemed to add words unnecessarily because the author could not think of what else to put. These lyrics are guaranteed to screeve your cordwangle and bring moulies to your possett. here is some of the broadcasts.

'GruntFuttock' is the name of a character played by Kenneth Williams in a BBC radio comedy show in the 1960s, pre-"The Goon Show". It was a hugely smutty show headed by a quite old guy called Kenneth Horne, and was called (cleverly) Round The Horne. The GruntFuttock character was part of one of their particular scetches which illustrated a very smutty, very eccentric old Englishman in a very rural tiny seaside village (West Country, like Somerset, not like Brighton), whose favourite pasttime was something involving his 'cordwangler', and that a pretty young girl had some effect on his 'moolies'. Very puerile, but very BBC. 707 greetyngs Prymrose - y've heard it said that ramblyng Syd and the well known comedyan and raconteur Kenneth Wyllyams were one and the same person just as there are those who speculate that Wyllyam Shakespeare was Francys Bacon. who knows? much of the truth is lost in the mysts of tyme back in the days of steam radyo.

Before The suggestive language of Round the Horne there was of course the Goons who were working within a strict BBC censorship policy designed to eliminate what the producers’ guide of the time referred to as “crudities” or “doubtful material”: ...."There is an absolute ban upon the following: jokes about lavatories, effeminacy in men, immorality of any kind, suggestive references to honeymooning couples, chambermaids, fig leaves, ladies’ underwear (eg. winter draws on), animal habits (eg. rabbits), lodgers, commercial travellers" .... It was their delight to get forbidden phrases past their often comparatively unworldly producers. For example, the Goons invented a character William Cobbler, whose surname is rhyming slang (in full cobbler’s awls, “balls”; it is also the source of the popular London interjection cobblers!). Another was Hugh Jampton, that is, “huge hampton”, in which the second word is also rhyming slang: “Hampton Wick” (a London placename), meaning “prick” (from it comes the common London idiom “he gets on my wick”, meaning “he annoys me intensely".

Babylon Round the Horne was cutting edge. The Julian and Sandy sketches, broadcasting Chelsea high camp to suburban living rooms. Kenneth Williams was a tragic figure. He placed no value on his vast comic talent, if anything despised himself for what he considered an ignoble profession, and was tormented over his sexuality. He's often mentioned in Joe Orton's diaries, Orton portraying him as a permanently unhappy man. If I remember correctly it eventually emerged that his death was suicide, but the fact was hushed up at the time out of respect and affection for him. The BBC's rules for comedy make interesting reading. You can speculate over how far the Beeb was concerned with 'decency', and how far it wanted to distance itself from the music hall tradition, which ran on a staple diet of what the BBC's guidelines blacklisted. Whether the issue wasn't more to do with class, separating light entertainment for the middle classes from the vulgar amusements of the hoi polloi. Oh yeah, and cheers for posting the songs 707 cheers Meltdown - we genteel english have always been rather coy when it comes to vulgarity.

Back in 1914, the use of the phrase "Not bloody likely" on an English stage caused a national sensation. Upon the utterance of 'The Word', it was reported that there was "a few seconds of stunned disbelieving silence, and then hysterical laughter for at least a minute and a quarter". Contemporary newspapers delivered headlines such as 'THREATS BY DECENCY LEAGUE' and 'THEATER TO BE BOYCOTTED', and the Bishop of Woolwich reportedly proclaimed that "The Word should be banned". Then we had the swinging sixties kicked off by Lady Chatterley's Lover - every other page was plastered with f**k or c**t - but it was a work of literature so it was all done in the best possible taste Of course nowadays we are very sophisticated about the use of vulgarity in modern broadcasting (especially when Bob Geldof is being interviewed) Random radio jottings: Radio Lives - Kenneth Williams Random radio jottings Radio Lives - Kenneth Williams or The Big Cult all the way from Great Portland Street Surely there as few British celebrities who are so widely imitated – Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper and Jimmy Savile would be on the list – as Kenneth Williams.

Everyone can do Kenny. But the public face that he presented, and of course that voice, was a mix of the real Williams together with a dash of all those characters created for him by some of the best scriptwriters in the business. With the Radio 4 panel game Just a Minute celebrating its 45th year it’s perhaps timely to recall one of the great exponents of the game, the irrepressible and irreplaceable Kenneth Williams Of course Just a Minute came relatively late in Williams’ career, he was already a veteran of some of the best known radio comedies of all time and a star, on no star money, of the Carry On series. Kenneth’s appearance with Hancock and Horne are well represented by regular repeats on BBC 4 Extra and commercial releases so I’ll avoid reposting them here. [1] Instead I’m been rummaging in my ganderbag and I’ll be concentrating on his later shows including his last ever radio appearance in 1988. Like many of his generation Kenneth’s first taste for performing came from his days with the Combined Services Entertainments, the successor to the famous ENSA.

That was in 1947 where, as part of the Survey Section of the Royal Engineers, he was posted to the Far East. Here he also got his first taste of radio broadcasting on Radio Malaya and the Blighty Calling programme on the Forces Network of Radio Rangoon. On demob Williams pursued his theatrical ambitions, and he remained dedicated to the stage for many years, with the Newquay Repertory Players. Throughout the 1950s Kenneth’s regular work was mostly in local rep before moving into revues that allowed him to use that voice to more comedic effect. Later he would make occasional forays into “legitimate” theatre. According to Williams’ diary he earned his first BBC cheque in 1949 for a part in a John P. Wynn radio serial Gordon Grantley K.C. His first tv work came in 1952 in the role of the Angel in an H.G. Wells fantasy The Wonderful Visit. The first cinema role was the same year, a junior gardener in the murder thriller Trent’s Last Case.

But generally work was slow even though, as he saw it, “I am destined to be a good actor.” Kenny’s big break came, as is well-documented and was oft-repeated by Williams himself, when he played the part of the Dauphin in Saint Joan opposite Siobhan McKenna. “In the Epilogue to the play”, he relates in his autobiography, “I used a heavily ageing make-up and a querulous old man’s voice and to my astonishment this led to a call from the BBC asking me to join the radio programme, Hancock’s Half Hour”. Roger Wilmut, in Tony Hancock ‘Artsiste’, takes up the story: Main Wilson needed one more regular voice, to play the succession of lower-middle class bureaucrats with whom Hancock was expected to get involved. He rang round various theatrical agents without success, until one of them suggested that Main Wilson should go to see an actor – not on the agent’s books – who was appearing as the Dauphin in Shaw’s Saint Joan at the Arts Theatre. It was the twenty-eight-year old Kenneth Williams. Main Wilson went to see the performance.

He was not disappointed- Williams imbued the Dauphin with comedy, sadness, and towards the end, a malevolence that deeply impressed Main Wilson. The first episode of Hancock’s Half-Hour was recorded at the Camden Theatre on 30 October 1954 and transmitted three days later on the Light Programme. In the show Williams plays the part of Lord Bayswater. His diary entry for the recording states that it “went very well really, and I got through OK”, but the following week, ever critical of his own performances, he played a policeman and a judge “both badly”. A month later again he was “really very bad indeed” but also the Galton and Simpson script was “lousy”. This flipping of opinion from day to day, from show to show was not uncommon throughout his career and mirrored Williams’ own behaviour on shows such as Just a Minute: earnest and intellectual one moment and outrageous and lewd the next. Kenneth was well-read in prose and verse (he would contribute to several Radio 4 poetry programmes in later years) but the baser Cockney humour often surfaced.

Williams and Hancock got on famously at first but the latter’s gradual self-destruction through his search for some form of comedic truth led to the dropping of Williams – “it’s a gimmick-a funny voice-it’s cartoon stuff. It’s not true to life and I don’t want it in the show.” – and Bill Kerr, Hattie Jacques, Sid James and eventually Galton and Simpson. The ‘snide’ voice and the catchphrase “stop messin’ about” may have been dropped by Hancock but they gave Williams a fame, of a kind he did not seek, and led to the start of his greatest period on the radio working with Kenneth Horne, whom he adored and admired, on Beyond Our Ken and Round the Horne. For a while, in 1958 and 1959, Kenneth was on both Beyond Our Ken (the pilot had been recorded in 1957 but it went to series the following February) and Hancock’s Half Hour. From the off he thought the scripts by Eric Merriman and Barry Took “v. good” and the opening moments of the first episode show the “snide” voice back in use.

Carry On publicity shot 1958 also saw the start of that other great British institution, the Carry On series. In Carry on Sergeant, taking its cue from the hit Granada TV series The Army Game, Williams played the “supercilious know-all” James Bailey. The series, which nearly all featured Williams, made him a household name and added to the list of his catchphrases and quotable lines : “oh matron”, “infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me”, “frying tonight!”. Eventually he came to loathe the “appalling” scripts but whilst enjoying the camaraderie and fun of the cast and crew. He never got rich on these films, the fee for Sergeant was £800 and remained so until 1962 when it was raised to £5,000 and was little changed for the remainder of the run. Years later, from the mid-70s on, more lucrative work came from commercial voiceovers. Beyond Our Ken came to an end in 1964 following a dispute between the BBC and writer Eric Merriman.

The follow-up series, planned as It’s Ken Again but changed to Round the Horne, was scripted by Barry Took and Marty Feldman, who had both been working on The Army Game. Those shows, running from 1965 to 1968, gave Williams free-reign to use all the voices in his repertoire, to ham it up mercilessly and to seemingly come out of character (Williams was a great ad-libber) , though it was, of course, all scripted. I demand a rewrite. Give me back my youth. Take no notice listeners – I’m still young and lithe – I am a gilded youth. Gilded. Gilded. The Round the Horne cast and script were all top-notch and are still deliciously funny today. Williams’ regular characters of Rambling Syd Rumpo, J. Peasmold Gruntfuttock, Dr Chou En Ginsberg, MA (Failed) and Sandy, to Paddick’s Julian, are stand out comic creations.

Typically Kenneth’s reactions to the series swung from a “marvellous series of scripts” to “moribund” but there’s no doubting that the sudden death of Kenneth Horne in 1968 was a blow; “I loved that man. His unselfish nature, his kindness, tolerance and gentleness were an example to everyone. God know what will happen to the series now”. What happened was a series developed specifically for Williams, but seen as a rehash of RTH, called Stop Messing About. Barry Took, who dipped out of writing this series, concluded “it was not a great success and was soon abandoned”. Listening again to Stop Messing About you sense the loss of Kenneth Horne around whom all the madness used to happen. As if to compensate, announcer Douglas Smith gets more lines as the show’s straight man. The show lasted for two series. Radio Times 1 Sept 1971 There followed a handful of short-lived comedy vehicles for Williiams: The Secret Life of Kenneth Williams (1971) and More of The Secret Life of Kenneth Williams (1973) written by R.D. Wingfield.

These actually came from the BBC drama department, being produced by Keith Williams, the first producer on Waggoners’ Walk. The use of announcer Douglas Smith in the first series provided the link back to BOK and RTH. The Kenneth Williams Playhouse (1975) was four different shows one of which made it to a full series. That series was Oh, Get On with It! (1976) written by Pete Spence and co-starring his old mate Lance Percival and Miriam Margoyles. This was his last comedy series in a starring role, subsequent radio work was of the variety show style or as a guest panellist or speaker. Another series around this time reunited him with his Carry On Teacher co-star Ted Ray, The Betty Witherspoon Show (1974). The cast also included Miriam Margolyes and Nigel Rees. Williams judged the first recording as “just all right”. The panel game Just a Minute was first broadcast in December 1967 but it wasn’t until the second series the following year that Kenneth joined the show and stayed with it for the next 20 years, clocking up 346 appearances.

The ‘classic’ line-up of regulars would eventually become Williams, Clement Freud, Derek Nimmo and Peter Jones (in fact they appeared together in 38 programmes). This edition from series sixteen in 1982 features the four regulars. All are on top form as we hear attacks on Parsons’ chairmanship and a running gag about his wife, Nimmo’s world travels, witty interjections from Jones which Williams always relished (hear his braying laugh), and Freud’s use of lists and buzzing-in with seconds to go. It also gives an excellent opportunity to hear how Kenneth played the game- the swooping cadences, the change of voice mid-sentence, calls to “shut your row” and the final flourish, a full minute without interruption. You can just see those flaring nostrils. On the whole Williams enjoyed these Just a Minute recordings though as he admitted he sometime behaved “outrageously” or “disgracefully”. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he was now a regular on panel games and chat shows on both TV – Parkinson, Wogan, Harty, Aspel, Give Us a Clue, Whose Baby?, Through the Keyhole etc.

– and radio. On the radio you could catch Kenneth on the likes of Quote…Unquote, The Law Game, On the Air and Dealing with Daniels. From 1980 here he is on the quotations game. On the panel is John Lahr biographer of Kenneth’s old friend, playwright Joe Orton. Williams himself seems a little subdued at first, unwilling to play the game until coaxed by Rula Lenska’s anecdotes. Providing good value is Wynford Vaughan-Thomas. The chairman, as always, is Nigel Rees with Ronald Fletcher reading the quotations. Kenneth Williams' Cabaret with Julie Covington and Pat Coombs In 1982 Kenneth was one of the hosts on the Radio 2 series One Man’s Variety [2] providing the links between the musical and comedy acts. He’d done this role before of course on the late 60s TV series International Cabaret, but there’s now a growing sense of ‘haven’t we heard this all before?’.

Kenneth himself wrote that “for years I have been using my own material in chat shows or panel games, and I feel that I have become drained of all the ad-lib inventiveness.” He was again Master of Ceremonies the following year in the four-part series Kenneth Williams’ Cabaret. [3] Here’s the third programme with guests impressionist Peter Goodwright and singer Lois Lane. This was recorded on a poor quality tape so apologies for the tape hiss. Williams recorded his second appearance on Desert Island Discs in March 1987 and you can hear that programme online . The Spinners His last radio recording was made at the BBC’s Paris Theatre Studios on 7 March 1988 when he was a guest of The Spinners – they were celebrating their 40th and final year in showbusiness. Kenneth’s diary entry reads: “Met the Spinners in the narration booth & then rehearsed with Terry Walsh [guitarist]…oh! it was a delight to see him again. Alas! we have both grown old since the days of ‘R.T.H.’.

Eventually I went on and did the spot in an enclosed space-they screened off the studio saying it made a good atmosphere but the truth was that it was a sparse audience.” Here’s the show The Spinners and Friends as broadcast on 4 August 1988 with Kenneth doing an old Rambling Syd Rumpo song and reminiscing about his time on Round the Horne and Just a Minute. A little over a month after making this recording Kenneth was found dead in his London flat. Although he’d been ill for a year or more and had contemplated suicide many times in his life an inquest recorded an open verdict. His legacy to entertainment lives on in those classic shows from radio’s golden age and the Carry On re-runs. It may not be the great acting legacy he always wanted, but it’s a great comic legacy nonetheless. Kenneth Charles Williams 1926-1988. [1] Hancock’s Half-Hour, Beyond Our Ken, Round the Horne and Stop Messing About are all available on CD from BBC Audio. Thanks to fellow radio enthusiasts I’ve been able to obtain copies of The Secret Life of Kenneth Williams, The Kenneth Williams Playhouse and Oh, Get On With It!.

All the full length recordings in this post come from my own archive. [2] One Man’s Variety (or One Woman’s Variety) was broadcast 2202-2300 Tuesdays 02.02.82 to 23.03.82 on BBC Radio 2. Each programme hosted as follows: (1) Ray Alan & Lord Charles (2) Roy Walker (3) Roy Hudd (4) Colin Crompton (5) Vince Hill (6) Janet Brown (7) John Inman (8) Kenneth Williams. Producer Richard Willcox. [3] Kenneth Williams’ Cabaret was broadcast 2130-2200 Tuesdays 25.01.83 to 15.2.83 on BBC Radio 2. All shows featured singing group Cantabile. (1) Pat Coombs and Julie Covington (2) Peter Hudson, Barbara Jay & Tommy Whittle (3) Peter Goodwright and Lois Lane (4) Isla St Clair and Jonathan Adams. Producer Jonathan James-Moore Quotes taken from: Round the Horne (Radio) - TV Tropes Round the Horne You need to login to do this.

Get Known if you don't have an account Share WMG Round the Horne was a 1960s British radio comedy starring Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams , Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, Bill Pertwee, and their announcer Douglas Smith. The main writers were Barry Took and Marty Feldman . The show was a Spiritual Successor to Beyond Our Ken, which had featured many of the same cast but a different head writer; when he left it was decided to revamp the series with a new title and characters. It took the form of a ramshackle local variety show with Kenneth Horne as MC, with sketches, songs, incomprehensible public service announcements, and "the answers to last week's questions" (the questions themselves were never actually announced). Double Entendre and corny old gags were rife, and sketches frequently appeared to break down into out-of-character bickering about the size of the parts and the quality of the scripts. The show was also populated by a collection of eccentric local characters (actually played by the cast, but treated as separate people within the show and never broke character).

These included the folk singer Rambling Syd Rumpo, whose songs were peppered with incomprehensible words that sounded like they'd be extremely rude if one only knew what they meant; J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock, the world's dirtiest Dirty Old Man ; and the show's breakout stars, the perpetually out-of-work actors Julian and Sandy, who were originally only supposed to appear in a single sketch but wound up returning in nearly every episode for the rest of the series. Was scheduled to return in 1969 for a fifth series but Kenneth Horne died of a heart attack aged 61 in February of that year, precluding any further series. BBC Four broadcast stage performances of the original scripts in 2004. Not to be confused with Around the Horn , the ESPN sports pundit show. The series provides examples of: Ambiguously Gay : Julian and Sandy are textbook cases: walking camp stereotypes, not to mention speech peppered with Polari , but it's never actually stated that they're gay, and indeed the subject of sexuality is never discussed, only sniggeringly alluded to. In what turned out to be the final episode, they casually reveal that they both have wives.

Kenneth Horne always acted as if he was himself, even in the main sketches where he's usually playing a part. (A lot like Neddie Seagoon, except even more of a Straight Man ). Douglas Smith really was a BBC continuity announcer, who were VERY straight laced at this period. Bad "Bad Acting" : Douglas Smith, nominally just the announcer, whenever he was called on to play a small role in a sketch. Brick Joke : So very many. Catch Phrase : All the recurring characters had one; probably the most famous was "Hello, I'm Julian and this is my friend Sandy." Department of Redundancy Department : Charles and Fiona were prone to this. Charles: I know. Fiona: I know you know. Charles: I know you know I know. Fiona: Yes, I know. Dirty Old Man : J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock, undoubtedly. The Dividual : Julian and Sandy always appear and act together. Doomy Dooms of Doom : Spasm the butler, in the recurring skit "The Clissold Saga", took every opportunity to declare that doom was upon them.

Double Entendre Faux Documentary : The 'Backroom Boys of the BBC' sketches were essentially this. Fictional Holiday : The public service announcements often featured unusual festivals and commemorations, such as Immerse An Orangutan In Porridge Week. Folk Music : Rambling Syd Rumpo. Getting Crap Past the Radar : Julian and Sandy did this by using Polari to great effect: 'We're a couple of omi-palones ' Pretty much every character's name would adhere to this. Interactive Narrator : Douglas Smith is this. Oh boy, is he this... I Read It for the Articles : One of the running gags is Kenneth Horne mentioning some absurd and often vaguely smutty-sounding publication and claiming to read it for the crossword/spot the ball competion/etc. "Recently I was leafing through my copy of Throw off Your Clothes and Live — I buy it for the chess problems..." "The other day, as I was glancing through my copy of Forbidden Flesh Weekly - (pause for scandalised laughter from the audience) - it's a vegetarian magazine..." Larynx Dissonance : Lotus Blossom, played by Hugh Paddick with a deep raspy voice.

Morally Ambiguous Doctorate : Parodied with recurring villain Doctor Chou-En Ginsberg, M.A. (failed). New Job as the Plot Demands : Julian and Sandy tried a new job every week while waiting for their acting careers to pick up. The standard set-up for their sketches was for Kenneth Horne to enter a shop or some other place of business and discover that, coincidentally, it was the place where Julian and Sandy were working this week. Noodle Incident : Answers to Last Week's Questions often ventured into this territory. What the questions were to cause such outlandish answers was never revealed. After the 'Julian and Sandy' bits, which always started by Kenneth Horne recounting why he walked into the business of the week, the show would sometimes come back to the present, with him finishing "... and that, Ladies and Gentlemen on the jury, is why I am standing here today" (or similar). What it was that the Julian and Sandy punchline caused the trial was never explained. Not Even Bothering with the Accent : Kenneth Horne plays every part in his own voice, a fact often lampshaded in the script. Parody : Everything from Moby-Dick to Brief Encounter .

The plays Charles and Fiona star in are caricatures of Noï¿½l Coward 's style. Running Gag : Phew, where do we start? Kenneth Williams breaking character to rant about how he's not being serviced ("I need servicin'"). Whenever a question is asked, it's followed by "Answers on a post card, care of the BBC..." Douglas Smith going off on narcissistic tangents. "Many times. Many, many times." Variety Show Who Writes This Crap?! : Sketches are often interrupted by a cast member, usually Kenneth Williams, complaining about the quality of the script or that he's been given a part that doesn't allow him to show off the full range of his talents. Kenneth Williams and Barry Took said in the years since the show aired that all of Williams' "ad-libs," especially those complaining about the material, were actually in the script. None of your actual ad-libbing was ever in the show. Yellow Peril : Parodied with the villainous Dr Chou En Ginsberg, MA (failed) and his concubine, the lovely (but suspiciously deep-voiced) Lotus Blossom.

:: Indexes :: Kenneth Williams Kenneth Williams November 19, 2014 People Kenneth Charles Williams (22 February 1926 – 15 April 1988) was an English comic actor and comedian. He was one of the main ensemble in 26 of the 31 Carry On films, and appeared in numerous British television shows and radio comedies with Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne.[1][2] Life and Career Kenneth Charles Williams was born on 22 February 1926 in Bingfield Street, King’s Cross, London,[3] the son of Louisa (“Lou” or “Louie”) Morgan and Charles Williams, a barber and strict Methodist. Williams had a half-sister, Alice Patricia “Pat”, born illegitimately before Louie had met Charlie Williams. He was educated at Lyulph Stanley School, later becoming apprenticed as a draughtsman to a mapmaker. He joined the Army in 1944 at 18.

As part of the Royal Engineers survey section in Bombay, he first performed on stage in the Combined Services Entertainment alongside Stanley Baxter and Peter Nichols.[4] He was a voracious reader able to quote poems or literary extracts from memory. Excerpts from the diaries he kept as an adult show that he adored his supportive and theatrical mother but despised his homophobic, morose and selfish father. Comic Performer Williams’s professional career began in 1948 in repertory theatre. Failure to become a serious dramatic actor disappointed him, but his potential as a comic performer gave him his break when he was spotted playing the Dauphin in Bernard Shaw ‘s St Joan in the West End, in 1954 [5] by radio producer Dennis Main Wilson. Main Wilson was casting Hancock’s Half Hour, a radio series starring Tony Hancock. Playing mostly funny voice roles, Williams stayed in the series almost to the end, five years later.[6] His nasal, whiny, camp-cockney inflections (epitomised in his “Stop messing about … !” catchphrase) became popular with listeners.[7] Despite the success and recognition the show brought him, Williams considered theatre, film and television to be superior forms of entertainment.

When Hancock steered the show away from what he considered gimmicks and silly voices, Williams found he had less to do. Tiring of this reduced status, he joined Kenneth Horne in Beyond Our Ken (1958–1964), and its sequel, Round the Horne (1965–1968). His roles in Round the Horne included Rambling Syd Rumpo, the eccentric folk singer; Dr Chou En Ginsberg, MA (failed), Oriental criminal mastermind; J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock, telephone heavy breather and dirty old man; and Sandy of the camp couple Julian and Sandy (Julian was played by Hugh Paddick). Their double act contained double entendres and Polari, the homosexual argot. Williams also appeared in West End revues including Share My Lettuce with Maggie Smith , written by Bamber Gascoigne, and Pieces of Eight with Fenella Fielding. The latter included material specially written for him by Peter Cook, then a student at Pembroke College, Cambridge.[8] Cook’s “One Leg Too Few” and “Interesting Facts” were part of the show and became routines in his own performances.

Williams’s last revue was One Over The Eight at the Duke of York’s Theatre , with Sheila Hancock.[9][10] In 1972, Williams starred opposite Jennie Linden in My Fat Friend at the West End’s Globe Theatre.[11] He also appeared with Ingrid Bergman in a production of Shaw ‘s Captain Brassbound’s Conversion at the Cambridge Theatre , in 1971. Carry On Movies Williams worked regularly in British film during the 1960s and 1970s, mainly in the Carry On series (1958–1978) with its double entendre humour; and appearing in the series more than any other actor.[6] The films were commercially successful but Williams and the cast were apparently poorly paid. In his diaries, Williams wrote that he earned more in a British Gas advert than for any Carry On film. He often privately criticised and “dripped vitriol” upon the films, considering them beneath him.[12] This became the case with many of the films and shows in which he appeared. He was quick to find fault with his own work, and that of others.

Despite this, he spoke fondly of the Carry Ons in interviews. Peter Rogers, producer of the series, recollected, “Kenneth was worth taking care of because, while he cost very little – £5,000 a film, he made a great deal of money for the franchise.”[13] Radio and Television shows Williams was a regular on the BBC radio panel game Just a Minute from its second season in 1968 until his death. From 1972, when he felt he was not being appreciated, he would scream, “I’ve come all the way from Great Portland Street” (it was a short distance to the studio from his home).

He also talked for almost a minute[14] about a supposed Austrian psychiatrist called Heinrich Swartzberg, correctly guessing that the show’s creator, Ian Messiter, had just made the name up.[15] On television he was a frequent contributor to the 1973–1974 revival of What’s My Line?, hosted the weekly entertainment show International Cabaret and was a regular reader on the children’s storytelling series Jackanory on BBC1, hosting 69 episodes.[16] He appeared on Michael Parkinson’s chat show on eight occasions, regaling audiences with anecdotes from his career. Williams was a stand-in host on the Wogan talk show in 1986; and also voiced the cartoon “Willo the Wisp”. Personal Life and Death On 14 October 1962, Charlie Williams was taken to hospital after drinking carbon tetrachloride that had been stored in a cough-mixture bottle. Kenneth refused to visit him. The next day Charlie died while Kenneth was out to lunch and the cinema; an hour after being given the news, Kenneth went on stage in the West End.

The coroner’s court recorded a verdict of accidental death due to corrosive poisoning by carbon tetrachloride.[17] Several years later Williams turned down work with Orson Welles in America because he disliked the country and had no desire to work there. Many years after his death, The Mail on Sunday, quoting Wes Butters, co-writer of the book Kenneth Williams Unseen: The Private Notes, Scripts And Photographs, claimed Williams had been denied a visa because Scotland Yard considered him a suspect in his father’s death.[18] Williams insisted that he was celibate and his diaries substantiate his claims—at least from his early 40s onwards. He lived alone all his adult life and had few close companions apart from his mother, and no significant romantic relationships. His diaries contain references to unconsummated or barely consummated homosexual dalliances, which he describes as “traditional matters” or “tradiola”.

(Since male homosexual activity was a criminal offence in the UK before 1967, outright admission would have been held against him if anyone had read the diaries.) He befriended gay playwright Joe Orton , who wrote the role of Inspector Truscott in Loot (1966) for him, and had holidays with Orton and his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, in Morocco. Other friends included Stanley Baxter, Gordon Jackson and his wife Rona Anderson, Sheila Hancock, and Maggie Smith and her playwright husband, Beverley Cross.[19] Williams lived in a succession of small rented flats in central London from the mid-1950s. After his father died, his mother Louisa lived near him, then in the flat next to his. His last home was a flat on Osnaburgh Street, now demolished.

Williams was fond of fellow Carry On regulars Barbara Windsor, Kenneth Connor, Hattie Jacques and Joan Sims.[20] Williams rarely revealed details of his private life, though he spoke openly to Owen Spencer-Thomas about his loneliness, despondency, and sense of underachievement in two half-hour documentary programmes entitled Carry On Kenneth on BBC Radio London.[21] In later years his health declined, along with that of his elderly mother, and his depression deepened. He died on 15 April 1988 in his flat; his last words (recorded in his diary) were “Oh, what’s the bloody point?”[22] – the cause of death was an overdose of barbiturates.[6] An inquest recorded an open verdict, as it was not possible to establish whether his death was a suicide or an accident.[23] His diaries reveal he had often had suicidal thoughts and as far back as his earliest diaries he noted there were times when he could see no point in existence. His authorised biography argues that Williams did not take his own life but died of an accidental overdose.

The actor had doubled his dosage of antacid without discussing this with his doctor; this, combined with the aforementioned mixture of medication, is the widely accepted cause of death. He had a stock of painkilling tablets and it is argued that he would have taken more of them if he had been intending suicide.[24] He was cremated at East Finchley Cemetery and his ashes were scattered in the memorial gardens.[25] Diaries and Biographies Posthumous publication of his private diaries and letters, edited by Russell Davies, caused controversy—particularly Williams’s caustic remarks about fellow professionals—and revealed bouts of despair, often primed by feelings of personal isolation and professional failure. Williams wrote his diaries from the age of 14 in 1940 until his death 48 years later, although the earliest to survive to publication was for 1942 when he reached 16.

Williams kept pocket-sized diaries for 1942 and 1947 (he kept no diaries for 1943 to 1946 as he was touring the Far East in the army); a desk diary for 1948; pocket-sized diaries for 1949 and 1950; desk diaries for 1951 to 1965; standard edition desk diaries for 1966 to 1971, and finally A4-sized executive desk diaries for 1972 to 1988. He claimed that writing in his diaries eased the loneliness he often felt. The day before his death, the final entry in his diary read, “Oh – what’s the bloody point?”[26][27] In April 2008 Radio 4 broadcast the two-part The Pain of Laughter: The Last Days of Kenneth Williams.[28] The programmes were researched and written by Wes Butters and narrated by Rob Brydon.

Butters purchased a collection of Williams’s personal belongings from the actor’s godson, Robert Chidell, to whom they had been bequeathed.[29] The first of the programmes said that, towards the end of his life and struggling with depression and ill health, Williams abandoned Christian faith following discussions with the poet Philip Larkin. Williams had been a Methodist, though he spent much of his life struggling with Christianity’s teachings on homosexuality.[28] Kenneth Williams Unseen by Wes Butters and Russell Davies, the first Williams biography in 15 years, was published in October 2008.[30] An authorised biography, Born Brilliant: The Life of Kenneth Williams, by Christopher Stevens,[31] was published in October 2010. This drew for the first time on the full Williams archive of diaries and letters, which had been stored in a London bank for 15 years following publication of edited extracts.[32] The biography said Williams used a variety of handwriting styles and colours in his journals, switching between different hands on the page.[33] Portrayals Williams has been portrayed in two made-for-television films.

In 2000, Adam Godley played him in the story of Sid James and Barbara Windsor’s love affair, Cor, Blimey! (Godley had originated the role in the 1998 National Theatre play Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick on which Cor Blimey! was based). Subsequently in 2006, Michael Sheen played him in the BBC Four drama Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!. David Benson’s 1996 Edinburgh Fringe show, Think No Evil of Us: My Life with Kenneth Williams, saw Benson playing Williams; after touring, the show ran in London’s West End. Benson reprised his performance at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe and continues to tour.[34] From 2003 to 2005, Robin Sebastian took on Williams in the West End stage show Round the Horne … Revisited, recreating his performance in 2008 for a production called Round the Horne: Unseen and Uncut.

Recognition The flat in Osnaburgh Street in which Williams had lived from 1972 until his death was bought by Rob Brydon and Julia Davis for the writing of their comedy series Human Remains. The building was demolished in May 2007.[35] Williams is commemorated by a blue plaque at the address of his father’s barber shop in Marchmont Street, London, where he lived from 1935 to 1956. The plaque was unveiled on 11 October 2009 by Bill Pertwee and Nicholas Parsons, with whom Williams performed.[36] In September 2010, a plaque commissioned by the British Comedy Society was unveiled in the foyer of the New Diorama Theatre by the Mayor of Camden accompanied by David Benson, the actor known for his performances of his own work dedicated to Williams, Think No Evil of Us – My Life With Kenneth Williams. The theatre stands in the Regent’s Place development, site of the demolished Osnaburgh Street.

On 22 February 2014 – on what would have been Williams’ 88th birthday – an English Heritage blue plaque was unveiled at Farley Court off Marylebone Road, where Williams lived between 1963 and 1970 in Flat 62. Speaking at the ceremony, his Carry On co-star Barbara Windsor said: “Kenny was a one off, a true original”.[37][38 Trent’s Last Case (1952) The Beggar’s Opera (1953) Valley of Song (1953) Twice Round the Daffodils (1962) Carry On Cruising (1962) Don’t Lose Your Head (1966) Follow That Camel (1967) Carry On Up the Khyber (1968) Carry On Camping (1969) Carry On Again Doctor (1969) Carry On Loving (1970) Carry On at Your Convenience (1971) Carry On Matron (1971) That’s Carry On!

(1977) The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978) Carry On Emmannuelle (1978) The Secret Life of Kenneth Williams Oh Get On with It Stop Messing About The Wind in the Willows Post Mortem by Stuart Jackman Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol[39] Television An Audience with Kenneth Williams What’s My Line? Let’s Make a Musical Meanwhile on BBC2 One Over the Eight (revue) The Private Ear and The Public Eye Gentle Jack I Only Have To Close My Eyes The Kenneth Williams Diaries

Question: On whose radio show did Kenneth Williams play Rambling Sid Rumpo?
Answer: Kenneth Horne