The Bensonian Archives

The last chapter of The Private World of Kenneth Williams, a project I put together with producer Jonathan James Moore in 2003. The three half-hour programmes comprised readings by me from The Kenneth Williams Diaries, interspersed with recordings of Kenneth himself in performance.

Here are the final, sad diary entries plus a clip from a radio phone-in show where Kenneth talks about his preferred epitaph.

The full programmes are available on a 2-CD set from the BBC: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Private-World-Kenneth-Williams-Dramatisation/dp/0563529369/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199104986&sr=8-1

Broadcast BBC Radio Four, December 2002

I was invited by producer Jonathan James Moore to put together a tribute to my great theatrical hero Ruth Draper (1884-1956). It was a great honour to be able to pay public tribute to this brilliant performer, now sadly mostly forgotten but a huge and continuing influence on my own solo stage work. I was particularly pleased that we able to access rare recordings of Draper from the BBC's own archives, as well as playing copious extracts from the monologues recorded in 1954/55, when she was about seventy years old. You will also hear Joyce Grenfell and Maureen Lipman.

For more on Ruth Draper see: www.drapermonologues.com

Wes Butters, then host of Radio One's Chart Show, asked me to play the part of Bert for this skit. The voices of the stars (whoever they are) are genuine, recorded specially for the broadcast. Wes also asked me to do a couple of 'wind-up' calls, which I don't really approve of and I found hard to do. But I did them and here they are...

I was asked to provide voices for Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd in this BBC Radio One doc' about the UK film industry. Prod/writer Simon Barnard