Kenneth Williams - An Audience With Kenneth Williams DVD

By the time he recorded An Audience with Kenneth Williams in 1982, the comic actor had virtually given up the stage and screen and was well into his late career as a raconteur. As a potted hour of autobiography, it's a slick, polished affair. Fans will be familiar with the anecdotes about Noel Coward and piles, Edith Evans and the farting waiter and of course, the Carry On films. But perhaps the most notable thing is that while his posthumously published diaries revealed a dark and bitter melancholia, often aimed viciously at others, he was a very generous performer.... These are mainly tales about other people; Williams rarely puts himself centre stage other than in his masterly telling. And there is real warmth in his reminiscences of people like Maggie Smith, Gordon Jackson and Hattie Jacques. He was also a highly intelligent commentator on his craft. "Revue produces an eccentric, very stylised performer," he explains, talking about Smith and Fenella Fielding but clearly including himself. Although many of the stars in the audience are long since gone it's somehow reassuring to note that still, more than 20 years later, no televised evening with a celebrity is complete without Judith Chalmers and Matthew Kelly.--Piers Ford [show more]

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