Guest Blog: When Danny Baker met Kenneth Williams

Here's another fantastic guest blog from my blogging colleague, the lovely Glenda Young. So what happened when Danny Baker met the legendary Kenneth Williams? Read on to find out...  


I’ve just returned from holiday where one of the books I read was part two of Danny Baker’s autobiography “Going Off Alarming”.  The book is very funny and contains many wonderful stories and anecdotes, most at Danny’s expense.  And there is one anecdote about Kenneth Williams that I really enjoyed reading and thought others might like to hear it too.  It goes like this…

Danny Baker was, by all accounts, a huge fan of Kenneth Williams in his early days and loved his album called On Pleasure Bent. It contained a song called Spa’s, a monologue played by Williams which containes the phrase ‘My Iris will tell you…”

 

Anyway, Danny Baker was working on the Six O’Clock Show at the time and was sent to a West End Theatre to interview Kenneth Williams.  One thing they knew about Kenneth was that he hated people being late, and of course, Danny Baker and his crew were stuck in traffic and arrived very late indeed for the interview. A woman at the theatre met them with: “Oh God, are you here for Kenneth Williams? He’s been sat downstairs for hours. He was in a filthy mood an hour back, Christ knows how he’ll be now. I pity you lot, for sure.”

And so with that, they entered the theatre to find Kenneth Williams. He met them with: “Oh, now you ****ing arrive! Well it’s a disgrace!” He gave them a right tongue-lashing for being late and when he finally paused for breath, Danny Baker jumped in with “My Iris will tell you…”

“How do YOU know that?” Kenneth said with a big smile. As Danny Baker goes on to say… Jesus Christ it did the trick.

Kenneth took Danny to one side and was as nice as could be to him, giving him a great interview and all of his frostiness disappeared. Danny does say “Of course it probably didn’t hurt that I was a fairly good-looking bit of rough then too.”

“I’ve seen you on the Aspel show,” Kenneth Williams told Danny. “Can’t bear him, the dreary queen. Can you slip something in his Sanatogen and take over?” Then seductively he purred to Danny. “Bring your LP next time we meet. I’ll sign it for you. Something filthy…”

 

Glenda Young, editor of Coronation Street Blog
http://coronationstreetupdates.blogspot.com

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