Kenneth Williams Diaries – Kenneth Williams

which was lovely. She looked staggeringly well — quite blossoming & lovely and a girl from the press and a photographer (Irish Press) and then I went with Jeremy to the studios. I opened the show with Gay Byrne interviewing me. It didn’t go well. The audience was dull and very provincial. I got the laughs but they weren’t easy.

Sunday, 19 October Thought a lot about the trip to Dublin. The atmosphere of seediness and decay about the city, and the feeling of utter provinciality combined to make me feel depressed. There is something terribly doomed about the Irish. They’ve got the poetry — you can hear it in their speech and feel it in their art: but they need the organising genius to prosper. They need the English. They need a nation of shopkeepers, mercenary philistines, to counterbalance them: and ironically they reject them (quite reasonably of course judging from the past) but one sees that Wales would go irrevocably to the same kind of arable-ism if she severed her ties with England.

Tuesday, 21 October Austin Steele on the telephone today. John Law has been unconscious for the last eight days. His position is very precarious. Austin said he would contact me in a couple of weeks and that we could try to knock out the other 2 shows then. I would like to have a go at this because I like him. Wednesday, 22 October These last two days (and probably tomorrow will be!)

are curiously disjointed. I have not been keeping to my traditional chores & the diary has suffered. It’s all been over this daft desire to write letters to the papers and see my name in print & have people think ‘There’s clever!’ I know I’m not lovely, so I’m desperate to be thought clever. Saturday, 25 October I had the great self-fulfilment session. The image alternated between J.M.

(I was going down to him in a taxi) and a large handsome sailor: then everyone became ambidextrous.

The Kenneth Williams Diaries Russell Davies, editor of The Kenneth Williams Diaries, became a freelance writer and broadcaster soon after leaving Cambridge University in 1969. He has been film and television critic of the Observer and television critic of the Sunday Times, and lately has been writing a col- umn about sport for the Sunday Telegraph. For television and radio, he has presented many literary and political features, a history of radio comedy, more than fifty editions of ‘What the Papers Say’, sundry jazz documen- taries and a number of arts documentaries (some of them watched by Kenneth Williams); but in spite of his involvement with Light Entertainment, particularly in radio, he never quite collided with Williams himself — except in print.

(‘Sounds like a nasty piece of work’ was Williams’s verdict in the Diaries. If only they had met!) Russell Davies is also the editor of The Kenneth Williams Letters which, like Kenneth Williams’s autobiog- raphy Just Williams, is available in HarperCollins paper- back. Also edited by Russell Davies’ The Kenneth Williams Letters THE KENNETH WILLIAMS DIARIES Edited by Russell Davies HarperCollinsPublishers HarperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB This paperback edition 1994 fi 2) Tah ie!

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1993 Copyright © The Estate of Kenneth Williams 1993 Introduction, notes and compilation copyright © Russell Davies 1993 ISBN 0 00 638090 5 Set in Linotron Meridien Printed in Great Britain by HarperCollinsManufacturing Glasgow All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

CONTENTS List of Illustrations Vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction xi A Note on the Diaries XXV A Note on the Text XXViii THE DIARIES 1 Appendix A: Addresses of Kenneth Williams 802 Appendix B: Films Referred to in the Diaries 803 Index ILLUSTRATIONS . KW, aged nine, as Princess Angelica in The Rose and the Ring, c.1935 . Jimmy Viccars and KW in Seven Keys to Baldpate, Singapore, 1946 . KWin High and Low, Singapore, February 1947 .

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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