Free Going Off Alarming: The Autobiography: Vol 2 by Danny Baker Page A

English face
Oh, Boadicea, she’s got a lot to answer for!
    I will to this day eagerly perform both tracks in full should anyone be good enough to drop a hat – so don’t talk to me about Hot Rats . And there was one other track, ‘Spa’s’, a monologue played by Williams as a spluttering hypochondriac crone, during which an endless stream of ailments were all followed by the phrase ‘My Iris will tell you  . . .’ that I could also rattle off in character and verbatim. Almost beyond reason, it was to be this long-dormant and seemingly superfluous morsel of salted-away brain matter that was to see Carry On Kenneth Williams open the door to me and Wendy’s first married home. Here’s how.
    The item we were filming that day – let’s say it was about the sad disappearance of coal deliverymen from the London scene, it very often was – had not been going well. Interviewees delivered hesitantly, working horses refused to thoughtfully munch their nose-bags on cue, nostalgic mountains of coal adamantly declined to be photogenic and, most crucially of all, whoever had worked out the day’s timings and locations had obviously mistaken the map of London with one of Beccles, Norfolk. Consequently, as it stood, we were finishing one section of our opus in a coal yard in Stepney and then had then about ten minutes to get to our next set-up at somebody’s backyard in Hayes, Middlesex. For those of you who don’t know the distances involved, it is the equivalent of leaving yourself the duration of a Ramones record to get from your bedroom to the moon. Thus when we came to set off for out last rendezvous of the day, a meet with Kenneth Williams at the Albery Theatre, St Martin’s Lane, we were running approximately one hour late. Again, for those of you unaware of the geography, the Albery is in the heart of London’s West End. Or to give it it’s full and tremendously accurate title, London’s busy West End. We were slogging our way therefrom Poplar in East London. Even if there had been mobile phones then it is extremely unlikely Kenneth Williams would have had one. Besides, such was his reputation for insisting on punctuality that none of us would have had the guts to ring it if he had.
    Given the circumstances, we made pretty good time getting across town. When we arrived at the theatre – the staff had arranged for someone to open the doors for us late afternoon – we were only five minutes shy of being two hours tardy. The upside to this was that there wasn’t a chance Kenneth Williams would be there and so at least we would be spared the full-flared nostril wrath as we weakly explained ourselves. So as we bundled into the dim Albery foyer, the plan was to apologize to the few staff around and, simply by showing up, show that our nightmare tale was the truth. At first nobody could be found. It struck me that to leave a West End theatre entirely unguarded was a tad cavalier. In the days of strolling players it would have been an absolute gift of a squat.
    Eventually, after a wandering the deserted corridors and calling a few muted ‘Hello’s?’ a woman emerged from a small office at the rear of the deserted stalls. Before we could speak, she asked, ‘Oh God are you here for Kenneth Williams? He’s been sat downstairs alone in the bar for hours. I keep checking on him. He was in a filthy mood an hour back – Christ knows how he’ll be now. I pity you lot, that’s for sure  . . .’
    I’ll be honest with you. Our crew that day included a hard-bitten, seen-it-all director, a cameraman who had covered football riots and a sound engineer who had been in Belfast for Bloody Sunday. And we all wanted to run away.
    Nobody said a word as we heavily descended to the gloomy half-light of the lower bar, which was of course closed. I remained at the back of the group because, as I say, I adored Kenneth Williams and I thought it would be a shame if he killed me before I could tell him how much I liked On Pleasure