Hello, I'm Christi Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. Reasons we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in 1987 and The presenter was Michael Parkinson. For forty years our castaway has occupied a unique place on stage, screen and radio. During the 50s and 60s in review and on the London stage. He starred in some of the masterpieces of radio like Hancock's Half Hour, Round the Horn, And just a minute. He made an international reputation by being a regular in the Carry On films.

Described and rightly so as one of the great institutions of British entertainment. Here's Kenneth Williams. Kenneth, do you think you might take to the solitary life on this desert island? Oh yes, I'm very practical, Michael. After all, I did... War service all over the place, in near Burma, and some of the conditions under which we lived were primitive indeed. Admittedly, we were backed up by army logistics, but every now and again you were left in some of these encampments with... Bear, and it says you really had to use some imagination to eke out what... Food there was available and you had to do things like make a fire and cook with very primitive Materials just a dixie and stuff like that I don't know whether we'd even have a Dixie on the desert island, of course. You can have them, certainly. What about music? Wouldn't that be a boon, a companion to you? Yes, it's always been. I mean, isn't music important to you? Always been a great solace to me, yes, and my taste.

I've always been toward the funereal, the dirge-like in music. I love things like requiem masses. I love the requiem fori and the one of Brahms, Deutsches Requiem. So what about your first choice then? Well, it's interesting you see, I did mention my love... For the forre requiem, this is a bit of forre, but it is something with a lovely melody. It's a forre bachorol. It's the number one in A minor, Opus 26.

was played there in fact by Paul Crossley he was a pianist there let's go back to

Background. In fact you're living not a stone's throw now from the place where you're born aren't you? That's right. Is that a conscious effort? I mean are you very aware of this? Yes I do like that. Yes you're right. You've hit on something there because I like to be where the roots are and I think where your roots are, to be reminded all the time of what you are, is a very very good thing because it stops any sort of illusion, a folly du grandeur, you know. Everybody who gets on a bit in Well, again, I go to them, you know. I've visited people who live in very posh places. You know, I went once... And there were servants and there's a chauffeur and a muse flat and all the sheesh and I thought, blimey... It's the bloke I was at school with, you know? And they get to be a bit grand. And I think to myself, well, I don't want any of that. That's why I've always had the one room kitchen and bathroom. And I get ready, you know, shove the armpit down the loo, and I do it all myself.

And that's one still, you see. I hang over two from the army, 'cause that taught you to do your own darning, give your own socks, sew your own buttons on. And I can do all those things for myself. Got the same apartment in the same sort of area that I grew up in, so I've not been subject to any false... Ideas about my station in life. And I suppose if you had ever been, and then your mum, who's obviously been a big influence in your life and is still alive,

- Next door, doesn't she? - Yes. You mean she'd have brought me down with a bang? - I think so. - Yes, you're right. You're right. So with my old man. My father was a great one for saying, Don't talk with a plum in your mouth, mate. Don't come here and talk with a... So I'd say, Hello. Can't go there. No. Stuff with me. Don't talk with a plum in your mouth. He used to say. You don't remember where you come from. I was a van boy in the LMS. And that's what it was. A hell of a mess. He used to say that about the railway. But that's how it began, you know. He was a van boy. Before he got the apprenticeship in hairdressing. And even in hairdressing it wasn't much good because he had no diplomacy. I actually saw a woman say, I would like Mr Williams to have a henna die. He said, You want to look like a tart? In a jar on your head. A bit up to your face. Tart yeah leave it as it nature intended mrs. mrs.

Instead of, you know, a sort of nam idea and a bit of diplomacy, a bit of flannel, you know. It's extraordinary. But you know, like cotton is in pubs, you get often that quality too behind the bar. A bit of chai I can call it. They will get away with a sort of rudeness that people think, Oh, well, that isn't malign. It isn't nasty. Meant he got away within his shop because he was quite a successful hairdresser, you know, and Doing the sort of things, Marcel waving, which was very much the fashion of the period, doing those things, he was very good at it. And I think, you know, that it wasn't a disadvantage. He had no diplomacy. Let's have another choice of record, please Kenneth. Well, now this is a favourite. This is Kathleen Ferrier. I adore Ferrier. But I also love this. It's because it's an example of the art song in English and we haven't got much of it. In Germany you've got the whole tradition of Lieder, but we haven't got much of it in England. That's why I value Roger Quilter.

Because he said a lot of the Tennyson songs and this is one of the songs from the princess, which is a lovely Tennyson poem. Now sleeps the crimson petal. Now falls the living, all her sweetness, oh. And

Roger Quilters now sleeps the Crimson Pedal sung there by Kathleen Ferrier. Let's go back to this background you were telling us about, your mum and dad living in London. Get the the first inclinations to be a performer to be on stage? Oh I think the instinct was from my mother Louisa, yes, I got it from Lou because she would come back from shopping expeditions or from the pub and say and that woman come in, she pushed right in, she said Excuse me, I put a pipe in for. Oh, excuse me? Could I have half a pen and a s-- getting these sort of impressions myself, you know? And I got that all from my mother. My father was very... rest in that respect. He would never give you an impression.

He'd say he'd come in here and I cleaned him, turn around and he said so and so. I said, Get out of it. They were always turning round. Always. I turned round to him and I said, If you don't like it, get out. He turned round and he said to me, Look here, mister. And I turned round and I said, Look here. They were all turning round when I grew up. And I sort of grew up in a world where all these incidents were dramatised, you know. And my mother loved popular songs and she was always singing them. Shoved on the table so the scrubbing was going on all round the table and I wasn't allowed to put my feet in the way of new scrubbing, you see. Things like Are you lonely tonight? Do you miss me tonight? You're sorry we drifted apart tonight. Are you lonely tonight? You sing. And when she came to the line, does your memory... Right, so I was there. She actually sang, Do the chairs in your parlor. And then I thought she sang Cementi and Bear. So I thought this lover. Was covered in cement who worked on a building site, you see. It's much later I found out that it was do the chairs and...

Parlour seem empty not cementy but my mother saying cementy and bare and i never heard i never heard the diction was terrible and so i grew up always trying to interpret all these things and so that's really What started off the whole idea of acting and being... Your father would surely want you to do a proper job wouldn't he? Oh yes, he didn't like anything to do with the acting profession. He said to me all the women are trumps. Pain since I've had him in here. I've had him in here with a blow- I'll give us a blow wave. Oh, I fancy a- I said get out, I'll blow you. I'll blow you right off the bloody premises. Get out! He had no time for them. He used to throw men out. They used to- Of people out the shop and wait for someone's little dying down or something. He thought it was terribly afeant. Now you know! See how the climate's changed. If you go into a hairdresser today and say, I want my hair waved, It says certainly, just do it. Nobody would question it. Did he live to be proud of you though? No, it wasn't that much.

No, I mean he did come and he said well I thought I'd see your name up one day and so grudgingly that was when I had to see Dappie Knee on outside the Apollo Theater. But he did do that, but he wouldn't take the tax. His junior mother can pay-- through the nose if you want to for a taxi. I'll get the bus and walk up from the circuit. - And he went to forget he took on the bus. Mother said, Oh, come on, I got me dress on, Charlie. Let's have a tat and get out of it. I'm not paying their prices. One and sixpence. All the way to Piccadilly, I'm gonna bust for tums. Get out. It was all that Get out. - Sudie turning round. - Yes, I'm turning round. - I turned round Towden. - Let's have another choice of record, please. - Yes, it's a Beethoven piece. It's the... well, I... Was quite the spring sonata. I tell you why I think it's marvelous. Because it shows the wealth of the man. He actually starts with a wonderful-- wonderful little tune. I mean it's a tune Adam Boyce could whistle. It's so lovely. And then he actually just dispenses with it.

Goes on to another one, and you think, Oh, how prodigal! How can you... And then you realize the enormous riches of this man. It's like a Shakespeare, you know. He'll give you a wonderful phrase, and you'll think, Oh, that's incredible! And then follow it with something equally wonderful, and you think, Oh, my goodness, the man's got loads of...

You

part of the first movement from Beethoven's Spring Sonata, played by Idzak Pillman and Vladimir Ashkenazy. Kenneth you're mentioning there the sort of the way that you're always Interpreting what people said as a young boy growing up when you lay You came onto the stage, and particularly I'm thinking about the characters you created in Radio. How much did you draw? Oh enormously, enormously. Yes, I met a man, a man was selling papers outside Shannon Cross Station. And I actually went up to him and said, I remember the occasion. It was about, um, Churchill. He was worried about his health. And he said, Ah, so there's the headline, yes, 'They Sink In', 'They Sink In Lower'. They're going to sink altogether, isn't he? I wish we'd get on with it. And the voice, you know, was all like the back of the throat, like all constricted, see? And I thought, that's a wonderful way to actually reproduce a voice. I use that voice a lot in radio. I used it for Grumpfah.

Coming on, I'd like to get my hands around Judith Chalmers, and I should do all this very horse dance with her. And it sounded really quite dirty, because Judith Chalmers was then the sweetheart, you know. That's right. They were the two-way network, the forces. A wonderful round the hall character, Jewel and Sanders, written by Barry Tewer. That was a clever idea, wasn't it? That was a very clever idea, because you see, what Barry Tewer can... And we're doing there because I said you know I don't think this will be popular they said yes it'll grow it'll grow Ken give it give it a chance because what doing is to educate them because we're going to say, all right, the hitherto it's been regarded as esoteric. To go into a whole reloaded jargon. But we'll make these two outrageous characters funny. Because of the manic insistence of the one.

Making the other confess. So one would say, Well I went in, Miss Strawn. Yes, you went in, go on. Well Miss Strawn, I went in and he said... Yes, what did he say? Go on, go on, what did he say? Go on, tell him what he said. Well, he got hold of me and he said... Yes, go on, what did he say about your eyebrows? Well he said you could do with pluck... Pluck in! Yes, Mr. Owen! This other one kept pushing the other one into terrible confessions, you see. Which, I mean, they weren't really terrible at all when you actually worked them out. But there was always this feeling... That there was a sort of, um, I don't know, doppelganger, if you like, pushing the other one into admissions that he didn't really want to make. And life is full of some... People. I said also too in the introduction it's perfectly true that you've been involved in some of the the masterpieces of radio I mean one thinks of the Hancock's Half Hour as an example. Yes Hancock's Half Hour well they had the brilliant script by Scotland Simpson and I...

To come in there you'll see with this character every week we said oh hello put your little finger in mine oh no stop messing around come on now come on I stood this da voice about this man who kept saying two little fingers which is a brilliant idea who's totally But it also upset Hancock didn't it? It upset him terribly because he said I don't want you coming on here halfway through the show getting enormous rounds of applause and destroying, he said, the pattern. Of the show which should proceed, he said, like a real narrative every week, not like a variety show which stopped in the middle by some character coming on and taking all the applause, you see. Of you who come up from the windmill working very very hard on things like variety band box and eventually getting a series and making it I suppose you're...

Oh, you would reasonably resent somebody who seems effortlessly to be walking on and getting away with anything, really getting away with murder, as I did. But in retrospect, of course, knowing there's a deal with hindsight, it was obviously part of that paranoia which in the end killed him. Yes, because it became more and more destructive. It wasn't only getting rid of me, it was getting rid of Hattie, getting rid of Sid, and eventually, Galton and Simpson, which is... - Yes. - Because you'd think you'd guard them like gold. Absolutely. Another choice of record, please, Kenneth. As you allow and this is marvelous it's a wonderful song when I first heard it I couldn't believe it because some wonderful melody and you see it's of special significance here because it's saying I think it's sang Brazilian but it's saying in English it would be saying go little bird and Tell them I'm lonely. So if I was on a desert island, you see, this is the perfect song for me to choose.

♪ Oh, oh ♪ - There's The Bluebird by O'Valle, sung by Gerard Souza. >> Kenneth, thank you so much. Being in your autobiography, just Williams, one's amazed by the range of people that you've worked with. I mean, everybody from Hattie Jake. Orson Welles really I suppose said James to Maggie Smith. Yes, Maggie Smith's tweet happens. Yes indeed. I'd like to ask you about, looking back as you have to when you do an autobiography,

stand out. I mean Maggie Smith was a kind of influential figure wasn't she? Oh enormously yes I loved her comedy. She did things with beads in a thing I played a sketch with her about a part of her life. Hostess who said, Here's a pencil and pattern, you won't find it bad. These games, we all of us know, pass them on as you write them and add them for an item. It's just party games, make a good party go. And this was rubbish, she lyric, but she made it terrible. Funny because she had a row of beads which she swung around the neck and then they swung around the shoulders and they swung right round The breasts, then around the middle and you thought they're gonna go off the frock entirely because they were spinning these beads and then she swung them all back until they were all round the top again. He finished the song immaculate. And of course it was the result of hard work. When she did it on the stage, effortless. And that's a quality that really great comedians, I mean, same with Alec Guinness, he'll practice something to... And so that it ends up like a deft piece of wonderful comedy business but it's the result

Hard work. Can you see Maggie Smith growing into one of our favorites, Dame Edith? Oh, I think she will be. Yes, yes. I think she will because she... Is so what I call it singular yes a unique actress and And I always remember there was one moment in the Shaffer plays when I sat down. You know that's a very long speech where you talk about the failure of a marriage and You're not breaking it up. I mean, it should be broken up. I mean, it can't be read like a monologue, and the moment it's coming out of the monologue. I know that! I'm on six weeks to get that! And she did. - Yes. - She did exactly that. She got it in six weeks. What about Demi? Because you liked working with her. I loved it, yes, but she made a lot of objections. And I only heard about them afterwards, because Binky Beaumont, who was presenting it, you know, he said to me... We had quite a bit of opposition, you know, when your casting came up. We said we're casting...

Kenneth Williams and said, Kenneth Williams? What are you casting Kenneth Williams for the wood god? A god? Kenneth Williams? Why don't you like the idea, Dame Edith? She said, well, he's got such a peculiar voice. What a cheek. What a nerve. Of course I didn't know. And she invited me, you know, into her dressing room. We were on tour at Brighton and she... I can hear you, half way down the corridor, talking to everyone in the company. Why don't they visit me? And I said, because they regard you as a great myth of the theatre, you're a big figure and formidable. For them. I mean, see, I've got them in my dressing room, they just pop in and say, Hello, what have you been doing? But they couldn't just pop in with you, they feel. She said, Well, I'd like them to pop in. I'm very ordinary. I sit a term on a three-legged wooden stool,

I like to baste my joint and I make my Yorkshire pudding. And Johnny G comes down, Johnny Gilbert, and says, Oh dear me, this is delicious, long shapoori. And I thought, dear, oh dear, is there anything battle? She said, I'm very ordinary. Uh, Danny, there's a vag in two, a Yorkshire pudding. You can hardly imagine it, can you? Yes, she actually did order it. That's an ordinary. The choice of record please, Kenneth. Well, it's the Tchaikovsky serenade, and I'll tell you why again, you see, because it's a magnificent melody. And what's wonderful about it, Michael, is that what he used... Is in the first movement, he inverts in the third, and it becomes another marvellous melody. But I love the first bit best.

Part of the first movement from Tchaikovsky's Cerenade for Strings played by the Academy's Saint Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Mariner. I've known everybody in show business, as I say, comes through in your book, and yet you've never had a close relationship with anybody. Why is that? Well, I suppose I've had some good friendships, but that's about all. I don't think it's given to us all. I remember the recent announcement by the Pope talking about this test-due baby business and this marvelous where he said, For some, it is natural they don't have any children, and they'll just have to accept it. Wonderfully simple and honest. And that's the truth for hundreds of bachelors, I suppose. They are not meant to share in that way. So they share in some other way. And I've always had the advantage of an audience, you see. And this is an enormous advantage. Because the whole wave of affection can go through an auditorium if your work turns out right.

But you've never had that sense of dynasty of wanting somebody to continue what you are? Oh heavens no, no nothing like that. I admire it when I read about it historically, when I read about famous families and... The line and I think that wonderful thing in Buddenbrooks, the Thomas Mann idea, this family and this Hanseatic League and part of that. ...whole tradition going on and on and on and then coming to this terrible finality with the dropout, the one that doesn't quite fit. And I was fascinated by it, but it's not so... That has been an ambition of mine. Oh, I think what you've got is something that's... Special to you and you must look after it, do what you can, do your best with it, like Voltaire says, digging your own bit of garden, and be satisfied. Another choice of record please Kenneth. And this is a composer I didn't really know much about, you know, until I heard Julian Bream playing him. He played some of Tarega.

And this is a lovely tune. I'm always on about tunes, aren't I? Because if I was on a design, I'd really need some good tunes, 'cause it's good tunes to get me through the day. And it's called Adelita.

The Mazurka Adelita by Toregga, played there by Julian Bream. You've done, as I say, this autobiography... It involves, of course, looking back over your, what, 60 years now, isn't it, of life? I'm 61 years, a professional would be about 40 wouldn't it? Of course, easily. Easy to remember looking back no no trouble at all because I keep a diary you see and you'd always kept it down from when I was 14 really started with wanting to know how I progressed in terms of the apprenticeship because when you're apprentice you'll... Something every week and I thought I must keep a record of all this so when I get my indentures I've got an absolute Absolutely clear idea of how I developed. I went to the army and still was able to practice raftsmanship you know, in the REs I went into the survey section. So I still kept it up and I kept up the diary but of course it all became different. I mean I started putting in bits of conversation almost as a bit of entertainment for myself. You know, if I heard something funny, I put it all down. And so it became a terribly useful compendium on which I could draw. And when it came to actually...

Constructing the biography. There was no need for me to do any work. I just chose the bits I wanted to choose, you know. I meant for him for... I hadn't got in the diary like circumstances of birth, the day, the hour. I simply went to my mother and asked her. I mean, she knew it all. I said, When was I? What can you remember? Of course I can remember when you were born. So there's your old man, your father. He had the mandi. It was always early to close in, mandis. And he had the arsenal because he was able to come to the birth. Be day closing. Early closing day would be changed to the Thursday's when we moved to Marchamstree. But in the Kings Cross area it would have been a Monday. And was it a pleasant journey, looking back? It was in some ways, but in others it wasn't. It was almost salutary. That had to be learned because I realized from much that I wrote in the early period what an arrogant little nasty person I was you know this

Desire to show off and at somebody else's expense and I think I've lost that now I think I don't do that but that business of picking people up you know if they make a mistake and I pick people love occasion, and I did it very much to their embarrassment, and that's not the attitude Somebody told me that when an Indian potentator, Buckingham Palace, was dining with Edward the Seventh, he picked up the finger bowl and drank from it. So Edward the Seventh... The same and they said that is the mark of someone who is a gentleman. Another choice of record please. This is the... B flat major shoe, but I mean, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but you'd be amazed because there's this this particular... Movement, which I love, you'd almost think you know you were in that scene in the Cadena Cafe in Brief Encounter.

You

to the second movement of Schubert's trio number one in B flat played by the Eustach trio. Kenneth, what's in the future for you now? What you're going to Well, there are various things in the pipeline, you know, and there are always people sending in ideas, but a question of whether... Either theatrical management wants to do it or whether a television series wants, you know, whether the company wants to make a television series out of it. But, erm, I've got some irons in the fire and they want me to do another book too, because publishers said, as the book's done so well, you ought to... A follow-up because your biography, Just Williams, only takes us to 75 and there's been a considerable lot happened since then. And you ought to do a follow-up, and I said yes, well I will, but of course you need a bit of time to get the thing in perspective. You know you need another decade before you get that decade in perspective don't you? I really do think you need a bit of time on that so I'm not that keen. They said what about an anthology of poetry now that is what I'm interested in but I would have to be very very carefully selected because so much...

The poetry I adore would include an awful lot of stuff the people are still alive, you see. I mean, although I'm mad about 19th century poets, I mean, I love, of course, Austen, I love Tennyson. Mad about Tennyson. But then, because I'm mad about lots of moderns like Larkin. You know and I'm mad about people like that wonderful man that wrote D'Amer who the one thing about is that Anybody there, so the traveler knocking on the moonlit door. In the book and on the program too, you mentioned that you are thinking of, prepared for passing on. Oh yes, I quite look forward to death. Quite look forward to death. Yes, I just hope... I just hope it's not painful. I don't want to kick up the backs... With the bustles on that you know I mean I want it to be nice that that mean the case have you thought of your epitaph I know but have you something as funny as as Dorothy's Parker when they said what do you want in your tombstone and she said this one's on me As good as that. And a final choice of record, please, Kevin. This waits appropriately, you see, because I did mention my love of Brahms earlier. It's the melancholy in me.

Norse melancholy and this is one of the four serious songs of Brahms. Die Liebe and the love. Und die Liebe ist die größister und einen. The love is the greatest. Und wättig wei Sagen wättig. Und wichte allergeheim nie seh. Und albe erkend nieß. Und het er habe henn glaube henn heil so. Das ich bergär zetzt.

Author Brahms' four serious songs sung by Hermann Pray. Kenneth, you're now on your desert island. You have to imagine that seven of your records have been washed away or destroyed. You're left with one. Oh, well, it would have to be one which fired my imagination in dozens of different ways, so I would go for the Beethoven. Yes, the spring sonata. And what about the book? Assume you've got the Bible, the works of Shakespeare. Yes, well it would have to be something full of variety, wouldn't it? So that I could dip into and always find something to suit the mood. The best thing I can think of in that direction would be Paul Graves' Golden Treasury. I don't think any anthology, though Larkin's comes near, but that's none of the matter, because it's essentially verse, whereas this is all poetry. So it's the one I would choose. And what about the luxury object inanimate? Well, it's a desert island, so though the sea water could be used to wash it, you'd still be a bit, I think, smelly, so I'd want...

A crate of lovely cologne and I would choose the La Plume et Lavender by Caron. I'd have a whole crate of it.

Thank you very much indeed. Thank you Michael. You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4. you