Being Kenneth

DAVID Benson's life with Kenneth Williams has become all consuming.

When last in York to perform his semi-autobiographical show Think No Evil Of Us, My Life With Kenneth Williams, Benson had planned to "curtail the relationship" shortly, although in his Evening Press interview he did say it "may re-flower again".

The year was 1997, and his comment came as he prepared to play York Arts Centre for the second time in 12 months.

Here he is, seven years later, performing his tragic-comic one-man show at the Grand Opera House in York on Tuesday in the latest tour of Think No Evil Of Us.

"I have lost track of how many performances I have done since 1997," David says. "I left it for a couple of years after 1998, feeling I had done all I could with it, but it's a show that still goes down well and I still find it endlessly fascinating, and because I know it so well, I can live it each night and re-visit it each night."

He may have lost count of the number of performances but Benson has not forgotten his previous encounters with York.

"I played there twice on my 1997 grand tour, in January and December, and it was the coldest venue I have ever played. Everyone sat there in coats and gloves both times, so it will be nice to be in a proper theatre this time... although York Arts Centre was a fine place too, of course."

Benson's 'life' with the late, great Kenneth Williams began when the Cockney aristocrat of the Carry On team read David's competition-winning story on the children's television programme Jackanory on December 10 1975.

He had hoped his hero, Spike Milligan, would do the reading; instead it was camp Kenneth.

For a 13-year-old Scottish boy attending a Birmingham comprehensive - and struggling with his own nascent sexuality, not to mention a schizophrenic mother - that was not good news.

"Everywhere I went at school the next day, I was hounded by pubescent Kenneth Williamses flapping their limp-wristed hands in my face," he recalls. From that moment, the most complex of British entertainers was to pitch camp in Benson's psyche.

Benson had been working in an Edinburgh bookshop when he heard that Williams had died, prompting him to write Think No Evil Of Us, a show that began in his living room, transferred to a draughty church hall in Edinburgh in summer of 1996, duly winning a Fringe First award before moving on to West End run in 1998.

Benson has a handful of other shows in his repertoire and you may have seen him playing Noel Coward in the Nicholas Lyndhurst's BBC sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart.

It could be mere coincidence but whereas Think No Evil Of Us is to be performed in York for the third time, the rest of his one-man roster has not visited the city: not To Be Frank, his study of the elusive Frankie Howerd, nor Mourning Glory, his reaction to the national outpouring of grief after Diana's death; nor Star Struck, his debunking reflection on hero worship that takes the form of a celebrity party held inside his teenage head, hosted by Noel Coward with all his childhood heroes in attendance.

"I got to play Fred Astaire, John Le Mesurier, Judy Garland, Eric Morecambe, Quentin Crisp, and Sinatra, who I really loved playing - he was a bit different from my dead, camp comedians!" David says.

Why does Think No Evil of Us, with its portrayal of Williams' vulnerable, insecure, tormented character and Benson's difficult childhood, hold such a grip on both Benson and theatre audiences?

"I am in awe of it, and yet it's a show I feel more comfortable with as the years pass. I hit on something that I can trust every time I do it, knowing it will live again each time, and he's such a great character to play because he is so complex and fascinating," he says.

"He was a highly insecure man for such a profession as acting, and in some ways his private suffering allowed us to be entertained."

The longer Benson's acquaintance with Williams, the more the mystery surrounding him still deepens. "There's a limit beyond which I can not go in working out what made him tick. But perhaps the version of Kenneth I play is also a version of myself working out how to make myself happier," David says.

"We all have a bit of Kenneth in us. It's the characteristic that Barry Humphries calls Plom's Disease: Poor Little Old Me."

Soon Benson will be turning his attention to his next Edinburgh Fringe solo show, a night of ghost stories entitled David Benson's Haunted Stage, but the ghost of Kenneth Williams will continue to haunt him.

Last November, Benson appeared in Joe Orton's Loot in the very role that Williams had played in the premiere. "I thought they had asked me to do it for that reason but the director was unaware Kenneth had done it," he says. Spooky.

David Benson, Think No Evil Of Us, My Life With Kenneth Williams, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm. Tickets: £12, £10; ring 0870 606 3595.The Private World Of Kenneth Williams, a BBC Radio 4 programme featuring Benson reading extracts from the Kenneth Williams diaries, is available from BBC Worldwide.

Updated: 09:10 Friday, May 14, 2004