Without hesitation as the whistle blows... The wit, wisdom and epitaph of a comic genius: CRAIG BROWN

Daily Mail​

5 days ago

When is a comedy not a comedy? Perhaps when it involves Radio 4's quiz show Just A Minute and the incomparable Kenneth Williams.
As I explained on Tuesday, I am addicted to the website just-a-minute.info, which offers complete transcripts of every episode of the show, dating back to the 1960s.
On one episode, broadcast on January 20, 1976, Williams had to speak on the subject of 'When It Is My Go'. He used the topic to round on his fellow panellists.
'When it is my go,' he began, 'I should be allowed to get under way properly and not be interfered with by pygmy-like minutiae and rubbish from other people... 'Get out, you old gasbag!' and rudeness! Whereas I, used to the cloistered world, or groves of academe, as they are sometimes called, should proceed evenly and calmly through life on some vast panopoly. Silken gowns and beauty, noise. No ugly chants. No discord shall interrupt!'
At this point, he accused his fellow panellists of failing to interrupt for sly reasons of their own.
'Oh, I realise I'm being set up rotten!' he continued. 'They've all just decided . . .'
But then the whistle went: he had completed the minute, without hesitation, deviation or repetition. However, instead of being triumphant, he was wary, complaining.
'They just sat there with no intention of pressing their buttons… I could see what they were doing: give him enough rope and he'll hang himself!'
Throughout his life as a comic, Kenneth Williams worried that audiences were laughing at him rather than with him. His diaries form a record of extravagant exhibitionism juxtaposed with intense self-loathing. They often seem to echo the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who wrote in his 1836 journal: 'I have just returned from a party of which I was the life and soul; wit poured from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away – and wanted to shoot myself.'
On another episode, Williams expatiated on the subject of 'Wellies'. 'The other use to which they could be put is shoved under a drainpipe and thus you collect water which in these times of emergency . . .' he began. A buzzer went. The actor Alfred Marks was challenging him. 'I don't know of many drainpipes that would take a full-sized welly,' said Marks.
Williams erupted with what appeared to be genuine fury.
'I don't care what drainpipes you're familiar with, mate! You don't know anything about drainpipes! You've never been round my place! What a nerve! Sitting there pontificating about drainpipes! You know nothing about them! What do you know about plumbing! You couldn't even change a washer!
'Look at him! He's gone white! He sits there – what a nerve! You've interrupted one of our great pundits! I know more about plumbing than you've had hot dinners!' At this point, panellist Peter Jones interjected: 'You've touched on a very sensitive area there, Alfred!'
'How dare you!' retorted Williams.
Another time, he was asked to speak on 'My Other Self'.
'It is the side of me few people ever see,' he said. 'I closely guard this private person because all of us do cherish some secret feeling which we feel, if it were to be betrayed…
'It was Emerson, I believe, who said we have as many personalities as we have friends. Mine consequently are varied and extraordinary. Many times, people say, 'Well, we saw a side of you we didn't know existed! How won-derful it was to have the curtain or the veil, as it were, lifted on your pro-cliv-ities!''
There were roars of laughter but, once again, the private man had unwittingly revealed his vulnerability. Williams did have many personalities: in his private diary he would often employ five or six entirely different styles of handwriting. And most of his personalities were tormented.
In February 1976, asked to speak on 'My Epitaph', he quoted – or slightly misquoted – these lines from Gray's Elegy:
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to fortune and to fame well known
And talent smiled upon his humble birth,
But melancholy claimed him for her own.