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Kenneth Williams |
Stop messin’ about and honour one of our greatest actors!
Calls to replace blue plaque for ‘Carry On’ comedian Kenneth Williams
HIS biggest fans are divided over whether Carry On star Kenneth Williams was ever really comfortable living in his Euston flat as he filled his diaries with moans about noisy neighbours.
But, whatever he thought of his mansion flat in Marlborough House, Osnaburgh Street, Williams might have flared his nostrils at the thought of it being reduced to rubble and uttered his immortal comedy catchphrase: “Stop messin’ about!”
It was knocked down last year to make way for a new skyscraper – and gone too is the blue plaque on its wall that told comedy fans the actor lived and died there. Now, Labour councillors and a host of fans in King’s Cross are calling on conservationists to come up with a new celebratory plaque at one of two of Williams’s other former homes in the borough.
Ward councillor Jonathan Simpson said: “Given the historic links that Kenneth Williams had to Camden it would be a great shame if one of our great comic legends could not be recognised through finding an alternative local site. I met Barbara Windsor in passing and she said that she’d love for English Heritage to find a suitable site locally.”
Williams, who also narrated the cult children’s cartoon Willo The Wisp, was found dead in his Osnaburgh Street house in 1988 after taking an overdose of sleeping pills, possibly accidentally. The Dead Comics Society later honoured him with a blue plaque. English Heritage have been asked to help out because 20 years have passed since Williams’s death, a time gap which fits in with the heritage body’s criteria for nominations to its own blue plaque scheme.
There are two suggestions for possible locations. One is his former flat in Queen Alexandra Mansions in Judd Street, which already has one dedicated to another famous former tenant, the artist Paul Nash.
But there is perhaps even louder support for his childhood home, a flat above a barber’s shop, in nearby Marchmont Street, to be honoured.
Russell Davies, the editor of Williams’s diaries and collected letters, who is preparing a new book of unseen material for publication later this year, said: “He wasn’t always happy there because he didn’t get on with his father – who wanted him to be rough and tough – but he spent about 30 years in Marchmont Street.
“I think he liked the area of King’s Cross. He once got as far as the Edgware Road but he didn’t really leave the area. He didn’t go far.”
Mr Davies added: “The Osnaburgh Street building isn’t there any more. From what I’m told the plaque that was there was inaccurate anyway. The people who occupied the flat he lived in didn’t want to have the plaque outside their window, perhaps because he died there – so it was actually put up one floor below.
“I’m not a fan of plaques that say ‘once lived in a building that once stood here’ – so I would go for Marchmont Street. The shop below is still a hairdressers as it was when he was there.”
Ian Broderick, who runs CV Hair & Beauty, the shop below Williams’s old home, said: “Kenneth Williams is Marchmont Street’s main claim to fame. Loads of people ask me about him. I think a plaque to him is a good thing – it’ll add a bit of interest to the street. Anything to honour our most famous resident.”
Jim MacSweeney, manager of Gay’s The Word opposite the hairdressers, said: “I think it’s important to have it here. There are so many Bloomsbury plaques in the neighbourhood – it’s good to give one to someone who was so well loved. Kenneth was such an erudite man and one of the best comic actors we’ve ever produced.”
English Heritage said anybody was welcome to propose suggestions for one of its blue plaques. |
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