He was ready to lend tacit support to the Campaign for Homosexual Equality - he told me he had been to a couple of their meetings - but he wasn’t interested in ‘gay rights’, just ‘the allieviation of suffering’. ‘The sex urge is just an animal instinct,’ he used to say, ‘the bit left over in us from the apes. It is the human heart we should be concerned with, and its intense vulnerability.’ Known as the Babes in the Woods, Waine and Dennis became friends with Williams after Waine, an Oxford undergraduate, sent him an amusing fan letter. Together with Williams's beloved mother, Louie, the couple became a vital support system, attending all the star's theatre and television performances and now and then unsuccessfully tempting him with other potential boyfriends, including rough labourers and squaddies which provoked an angry response. On one of many evenings at Orton's home, Waine also recalls Williams's fury when the playwright revealed that he had spiked Williams's food with hashish. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Ships from the UK. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects.

Kenneth Williams – Interview by Owen Spencer Thomas – BBC London Radio". Video Curios. 27 April 2015. Archived from the original on 11 December 2021 . Retrieved 21 September 2019. Kenneth Williams Unseen by Wes Butters and Russell Davies, the first Williams biography in 15 years, was published in October 2008. [45]Countdown [26/04/83] (1983)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 30 August 2021. David Benson – JAMES SEABRIGHT". Seabright.info. Archived from the original on 26 September 2009 . Retrieved 11 September 2011. Williams, Kenneth Charles (1926–1988)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. 2009. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/39951. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Kenneth, full of contradictions,was angry with himself for letting his career be reduced to the chat-show circuit, yet recognised - and relished - his own skill in the genre. After recording one of his appearances on Parkinson early in the evening he would come on to our house to view the transmission, providing a running commentary on his own performance. ‘That’s good, that’s very good. Don’t I look a dish? Lovely tag to that story.’ Williams, Kenneth (1995). The Kenneth Williams letters. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-638092-4 . Retrieved 23 February 2023. Anyway, my mother was a Morgan, and my father was a Williams, so I suppose the ancestry can be said to be Welsh. But I don't like nationalism. The very IDEA of devolution is mad. I don't even like the sound of the Welsh language, and I think their insistence on retaining it is barmy. All those signs to be re-written! can you imagine? :243

He was educated at The Lyulph Stanley Boys' Central Council School, [6] [7] a state-owned Central school, [8] in Camden Town, north London and subsequently became apprenticed as a draughtsman to a mapmaker. His apprenticeship was interrupted by the Blitz, and he was evacuated to Bicester, and the home of a bachelor veterinary surgeon. It provided his first experience of an educated, middle-class life, and he loved it. He returned to London with a new, vowel-elongated accent. [9] In 1944, aged 18, he was called up to the British Army. He became a sapper in the Royal Engineers Survey Section, doing much the same work that he did as a civilian. When the war ended he was in Ceylon and he opted to transfer to the Combined Services Entertainment Unit, which put on revue shows. While in that unit he met Stanley Baxter, Peter Vaughan, Peter Nichols and John Schlesinger. [10] By chance, Dennis was with Williams at his flat in August 1967 when news of Orton's murder at the hands of his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, broke. He tells Stevens that Williams was unable to take in what had happened. He refused to speak to the BBC and instead went out to the cinema, remaining in denial for several months. Cook, Peter; Cook, William (31 August 2013). Tragically I Was An Only Twin: The Comedy of Peter Cook – Peter Cook, William Cook – Google Books. Random House. ISBN 9781446429624 . Retrieved 30 June 2014.

Stevens's interviews with the two men, who have never sought publicity, have been a key element of his research. The varied extremes of their shared social life, from glamorous parties with famous names such as Rudolf Nureyev and Williams's good friend, the playwright Joe Orton, to quiet evenings of Scrabble at their north London home, have answered many questions about the private life of this lonely star. While Williams was clearly attracted to Waine, the friendship remained platonic.