Читать книгу Kenneth Williams Unseen: The private notes, scripts and photographs - Russell Davies - Страница 7

Whenever a comedy entertainer dies an unnatural death there’s an odd feeling in the air. It seems wrong. We all know it happens, and it can even feel understandable when there’s a long decline, a wasting-away of the beloved talent, to warn us that a sudden plunge might come. Such was the case with Kenneth Williams’s old colleague Tony Hancock, whose professional disinte-gration had been in progress for some time when he ended his life in 1968, on the other side of the world. Even if Hancock had left no suicide note there would have been little doubt that his exit was deliberate. Nobody needed to ask why.

Kenneth Williams left us twenty years after Hancock, and in the twenty more years since it happened few conversations about him can have failed to include the question, ‘Do you think he killed himself?’ The coroner at his inquest recorded an open verdict, and that naturally encourages speculation, since the ‘openness’ refers to the technical possibility that the case could be brought back to court and re-examined. That’s not going to happen, but the re-examination still goes on, informally, wherever Ken’s fans are gathered together.

Many factors are involved in the discussion, including the state of Kenneth’s career. He was still earning acceptably, and registered occasional astonishment when, say, an advertisement for dairy products brought him a cheque larger than the one he’d been accustomed to getting for a Carry On film. But in general his working life had begun to consist of spin-offs and guest appearances; the central column of his career was inert, without its theatrical and cinematic inputs, and with little serious drama even on radio. Probably the first sure symptom of a decline was his trip to Australia in 1981, to do two Michael Parkinson shows in the style he’d already refined at home. ‘I don’t seem to have anything else to do,’ he confessed to his diary, where the Australian visit was later characterized as ‘like an insane nightmare. At my age, the truth begins to dawn: look in the mirror and see an old face and the grey hair & know that you’re no longer dreaming of adventure…just desperately trying to provide for the old-age pension.’

Kenneth knew he wasn’t the only one to show his age, but the sight of his own generation at work wasn’t encouraging either (‘Benny Hill looks more and more like a desperate adipose decrepit’). Early 1983 found him ‘thinking that it would be far better to snuff it’, and at that point his physical pains amounted only to a stubborn cough. There came a high point later in the year with the television recording of An Audience with Kenneth Williams, his one-man entertainment in front of an all-star gathering of friends, but it wasn’t long before he was lamenting again the marks of age on his televisual image. His mother’s health scares begin to disrupt life at home. ‘I am now uninterested in work,’ he recorded in November 1984, the first time this particular form of negativity had afflicted him. His book Back Drops was remaindered the following year, and then, on 2 January 1986, ‘I noticed awful pain behind the ribs – seemed the alimentary tract was afire.’

That marked the beginning of the end, and the end came a little over two years later. Broadly speaking, there are two views on the matter, both very sincerely held. Among his friends, the feeling remains widespread that Kenneth simply couldn’t or wouldn’t have committed suicide, because of the family responsibilities he bore. His neighbour Paul Richardson feels that strongly, even though the subject of suicide had arisen between them.

Paul Richardson: ‘He once said to me on Warren Street, “Oh, I’m going to do away with all this. I’m going to commit suicide.” I said, “No, you’re not.” “No,” he said. “It takes guts, doesn’t it?” I don’t believe he did intentionally commit suicide. I do not believe that at all. I think with him taking Gaviscon and all kinds of pills to stop the pulsating pain, he did take an accidental overdose. I firmly believe that, because in no way would he have left behind Louie on her own. And I really think it was an accidental death.’

Derek Nimmo: ‘I remember once I ran his mother home after a recording “he’d gone off” and then I got a really lovely letter from Kenny a few days later because I’d taken his mother home. Something which he didn’t do, of course. And then on another occasion I gave her a silk scarf at Christmas, and I got a great long letter from Kenny saying how touched he was that I’d given it to his mother – I mean he deeply loved his mother, that’s why I always thought the whole suicide business seemed to be so unlikely, I know Freud also agrees with me. When the Coroner was asked whether he could have taken sleeping pills accidentally, “possible but not probable” I think were the words he used. I just can’t imagine that he would have killed himself, knowing his mother was going to be left behind, especially as he hadn’t really provided for her in his will. His mother was the most important person to him in the world, I think.’

Kenneth’s agent, Michael Anderson, feels that a form of professional pride would have got in the way, too.

Michael Anderson: ‘I personally don’t think that he did commit suicide for the rather curious reason because he had a commercial to do that day. Kenneth was far too professional not to do that. I just don’t think he meant to do it. I think it was a mistake. I wasn’t asked to go to the Coroner’s inquest. I would have said that if anybody had asked me. He had a job to do. I think it was a mistake.’

Kenneth’s mother and sister held to the same belief, quoting not a professional engagement on the timetable but a domestic one. Ken and Lou had an appointment together at the chiropodist’s the following morning.

Pat Williams: ‘He wouldn’t have done it to Mum. He would have known she would be ready at 10.30 the next morning for the chiropodist, that she would come in and find him there. He’d never talked about suicide, he’d never thought about doing anything like that. Nothing will convince me he took his own life.’

In contrast, outside the family he had talked a good deal about the subject, starting as early as his Combined Services entertainment days in post-war Singapore, where he recalled discussing suicide with Stanley Baxter. In a 1947 diary entry he identifies himself as ‘a suicidalist’, and the best part of a year later he is ‘seriously thinking about taking my own life’. This can of course be read as the rhetorical desperation of a young man without a defined path through life, but the feelings never quite go away. The summer of 1963 finds him ‘thinking all the while of death in some shape or another’. By 1972 he finds he has started ‘envisaging suicide and letters to friends and coroners’ – this, interestingly, in the middle of a bout of severe neck pain. Nothing disoriented Kenneth so much as physical suffering.

There is much more evidence of suicidal feeling in the diaries, but it all looks rather notional when laid alongside the harder evidence which Kenneth actually displayed to a couple of his friends. He evidently regarded the revelation as a kind of test.

Michael Whittaker: ‘Years before his suicide he showed me some pills, they were in his kitchen. He said, “Do you know what these are?” Well of course I didn’t, so I asked him what they were for. “For exiting this life,” he said. “You mean they’re suicide pills?” “Yes,” and he’d been collecting them for sixteen years or more. I didn’t quite know what to say so I said, “Surely if they’ve been collected for that long, then you can’t count on them, and would you like to be half dead? Take them and then find yourself half-alive and half-dead?” He said, “No, I’ve got enough to kill sixteen people. Thanks for nothing.” He was annoyed.’

It would seem that Kenneth had drawn attention to his store of pills as a gesture of intimidation, much as he kept his diaries on display, threatening visitors with inclusion within the blue-black binding of the current volume. But on this occasion his friend had failed to respond with the appropriate signs of fear and dismay, so the dramatic gesture misfired. The incident of the pills ended there, but not without leaving a profound impression on Michael Whittaker.