Wow !!!!!,

I am amazed and delighted to see a discussion of the late British comic genius Kenneth Williams at mudcat.....I grew up in Kings Cross the same part of central London he did,and I even attended the Argyle primary school in the sixties the same infant and primary school as he went to...but obviously a different generation...I have always found his humour to be such a familiar part of my life...there is something about his saucy postcard view of life that is very Kings cross in character...the areas changed a lot since i left in 1976,but during my first 16 years of life there it was a friendly if generaly poor area of London to live (i grew up in the 1880's tennemant blocks "Midhope buildings" built for the Victorian poor by the east end dwellings company.Until i was six years old we didnt have bath or toiletry facilities in the apartment we used to share a toilet on the balcony,and go once a week to the communal baths in the block (how things have changed???)..neighbours knew each others names,and we knew the local shopkeepers like family friends...We might not have been millionares,but my childhood memories are morre happy ones than sad,and I only have to think of Kenneth Williams who's father owned a barber shop off of Judd street for all those memories sweetened by the passing of time to flood back...it was very sad to hear of how in reality he was the archetypal sads clown of popular myth haunted by his own inability to come to terms with his own sexuality and in later life by obsessive behaviour patterns and arthritic pain..but for me their could never be a more amusing or greater practicioner of the comic art..

The definitive website about Kenneth Williams can be found at

http://www.kennethwilliams.org.uk/

Regards..

Jim Clark...London....England http://groups.msn.com/acousticmusiciansandpoetssoundarchive