Just Williams

Chris Hallam remembers a true genius of the comedy world

- Chris Hallam

Back in the 1980s, when I was a child, Kenneth Williams seemed to be everywhere. He was famously competitive against the likes of Derek Nimmo and Clement Freud on BBC Radio 4’s Just a Minute and could regularly be seen as a guest on shows as varied as Child’s Play, Whose Baby?, Through the Keyhole, Give Us a Clue, Did You See? and Countdown.

He was a chat-show favourite and was always reliably entertaining whether sitting opposite Harty, Aspel or Parkinson. He once even stood in for Terry Wogan himself during one of his occasional holidays. He played a devil, complete with horns and velvet cape, for a TV commercial for BP and did voiceovers on ads for Supersoft nappies and Temik pesticides. He was interviewed frequently on a variety of subjects both highbrow and lowbrow.

As a child, I enjoyed his spirited reading of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach on Jackanory, and could easily recognise his voice behind that of the bug-eyed ship’s computer SID (Space Investigation Detector) on Children’s BBC space comedy Galloping Galaxies!. More famously, he narrated and provided all of the voices for cartoon fantasy Willo the Wisp including unlikely fairy Mavis Cruet and malevolent TV set Evil Edna.