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

Bent . Just before the storm broke I glimpsed him about to explode, sitting cross-legged on a bar stool, his cream-coloured mackintosh belted, his face pinched and thunderous, his mouth tightened into a terrifying moue.
    Our researcher had barely set foot on the final step when Williams flew into a fury that had been stoked and carefully worded over the long wait. He began, wonderfully, incorporating a phrase that was almost a catchphrase:
    ‘Oh – now you fucking arrive! Well, it’s a dis- grace!’
    As he bellowed those last two syllables, I swear he sounded EXACTLY like Kenneth Williams.
    ‘If you think I have nothing better to do than to sit here while you moronic Neanderthals sit in the pub counting your money and chucking it down, then you can stick it up your arse! I am not giving you a word, do you hear, a word! I only hung on and hung on so I could tell you straight that I will be making a serious complaint to whatever boss-eyed twerp runs your otiose little outfit and hopefully get the lot of you sacked! I came here on the bloody bus, through the rain, as a favour, because YOU asked me, and then you leave me here in this gloomy pisshole for TWO hours?! I won’t have it!’
    It was as he paused for breath – or dramatic effect – that I said something that was possibly the last thing Kenneth Williams was expecting:
    ‘My Iris will tell you,’ I piped up.
    I had not planned on saying anything. It had been reflex, pure nervous reaction to a horrible atmosphere, but man alive – talk about your silver bullets!
    Kenneth Williams’ expression went from the outer reaches of austerity to the warm core of elation in less than one second.
    ‘How do YOU know that!!?’ he bellowed through a smile as wide as the coal chutes we’d hoped he would wax nostalgic for. It was as if the very walls of the bar had suddenly exhaled. ‘You’re far too young to know anything about that!’
    ‘Not at all, Mr Williams – it was a staple in our house,’ I said, making my way over. ‘I know every word of that LP: “Pardon Me, Sir Francis”, “Boadicea”, “Above All Else” – it’s like Noël Coward for me.’
    I know, I know. Obsequious little runt. Note the ‘Mr Williams’ due deference too – but Jesus Christ did it do the trick. Returning to his former frostiness in instructing the crew they could ‘get set upnow and be bloody quick with it’, Kenneth led me to a corner table and proceeded to tell me expansively all about the record and how he felt he never got the opportunity to break out into some of the personas it allowed him. Incredibly the one track he prized above all others was ‘Spa’s’, and though he hadn’t written it he had contributed the phrase ‘My Iris will tell you’, of which he was very proud. Of course, it probably didn’t hurt that I was a fairly good-looking bit of rough then too. When, eventually, I tried to explain why we were so late, he lowered his voice and with a conspiratorial smile said:
    ‘Oh, fuck that. It was a bit of a performance that. I’ve been shooting out, going round the bookshops – it’s been nice. Quite peaceful down here, actually. You know I’ve got bugger all else to do – but don’t tell this lot that – let ’em stew in it.’
    I rolled my eyes in sympathy. Yeah, bloody telly people. It was really quite frightening how readily I formed an instant artist’s bulwark against my still-cowed colleagues. To be fair to them, they knew that that one verbal punt had pulled everyone’s arses out the fire and understood all this haughty horseshit was absolutely essential, and of course I was revelling in every second of their agony.
    We got our Kenneth Williams remembers the coalman footage, complete with evocative anecdotes and funny voices. In the forty minutes or so it took, Kenneth never once spoke to or even acknowledged anyone else there beyond the most minimal of responses. It was as if these dreadful plebs were eavesdropping on a conversation Ken