1926: Kenneth Charles was born to Charles and Lousia Williams in a 1-bed flat at 11 Bingfield Street, just off Caledonian Road. The entire street's been redeveloped so there's nothing to see here, other than a green plaque on the replacement house unveiled by Sheila Hancock in 2010.
1928: The family moved to Flat 14 on the third floor at Cromer House on Cromer Street, King's Cross.
These are Whidborne Buildings, erected by the East End Dwellings Company in 1891. Several of their philanthropic blocks survive along Cromer Street, with Kenneth's comprising over 200 small flats stacked around a central courtyard. In his day you could wander in and out at will but these days access is via three keypadded gates, also a significant amount of shrubbery has been planted in what would once have been a utilities and kickabout space, also signs now warn 'No Ball Games'. The flats overlooked Whidborne Street, which is still part-cobbled and with a proper throwback garage on the bend displaying the telephone number TER 4577. It's a rare inner London neighbourhood where you can still imagine how things would have looked in Kenneth's day, so long as you ignore the designer handbag shop on the corner, also the Italian restaurant and yoga studio that now bookend egress from the flats.
Cromer Street features heavily in the BBC documentary Comic Roots, filmed in 1983, in which Kenneth revisits his childhood haunts. It's a fabulously nostalgic look at life in the 30s and the 80s, and because Kenneth talks ten to the dozen crams a heck of a lot into 30 minutes. It was also shown on BBC4 last night so you can watch it now, plus it's on YouTube in full, thus a recommended way to celebrate today's centenary.
In the documentary KW remembers how his neighbours used to push their piano down the street to The Boot for a communal singalong, and that trad boozer is still there today should you fancy a birthday pint over roast lamb shank. I did wonder if Ken and chums would have played in the gardens behind Holy Cross church across the street, but no that was all houses in their day and is now just a bombsite nobody's ever built over.
1931: Kenneth didn't have to go far for his early education, barely a one minute walk round the corner to Manchester Street School. It's very Edwardian and five storeys high to cram in as many classrooms as possible in a restricted space. It was while here that an English teacher suggested Kenneth take part in the school play 'The Rose and the Ring' (a story he'd later tell on Jackanory) and he duly stole the show as Princess Angelica. These days it's Argyle Primary, this because Manchester Street has since been renamed Argyle Street, and I note they're both a Beacon Peace Promoting School and proud holders of a TfL bronze.
1935: The Williams clan went up in the world when Charlie took over a hairdressing shop on Marchmont Street, close to what's now the Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury, with Kenneth taking the bedroom on the top floor. His Dad's speciality was doing Marcel waves, as signalled by a wiggly wig in the front window. Number 57 is still a hairdressers today but they do highlights and restorative conditioning, which wouldn't have been the Williams style at all, and the price of a gent's cut has shot up to £34. In 2010 a blue plaque was unveiled above the shampoo-stacked window amid much pizazz with Nicholas Parsons amongst the invited guests. The screed confirms that Kenneth lived here from 1935 to 1956 which, even allowing for wartime shenanigans in the Far East, makes it the longest-serving of all his residences.
This short section of Marchmont Street boasts a dazzling array of blue plaques including painter William Henry Hunt, poet William Empson, actor Emlyn Williams and composer William Reeve as well as our birthday boy, suggesting an astonishing density of famous Williams. There's also a plaque for Mark Ashton from action group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, as seen in the film Pride, who met in a room above the Gay's The Word bookshop. That's still trading at number 66 across the street, plus the pedestrian crossings up the street are painted in trans-friendly blue and pink, so it's likely a queer child growing up in a flat here today would feel a lot more welcomed by their inclusive environment.
1937: Kenneth's secondary education took place at Lyulph Stanley Central School in Camden, just round the corner from Mornington Crescent station. It looks very similar to Manchester Street, a tall brick warren with separate entrances for boys and girls. It's since become a primary school and been renamed Richard Cobden instead.
1939-ish: Kenneth's father took him out of school early to learn a trade, specifically as a mapmaker's draftsman at Stanfords in Covent Garden. The Blitz then intervened, triggering an evacuation to Bicester where Kenneth was billeted with a retired vet at 19 Sheep Street. We probably have Mr Chisholm to thank for KW's grasp of high culture, and perhaps for the fact he started a long-running diary in 1942. Kenneth turned 18 in 1944, joined the army and became a sapper in the Royal Engineers out East, transferring to the Combined Services Entertainment Unit after the war ended. But he still returned to Long Acre afterwards to continue his lithographic apprenticeship, at least until the lure of acting and showbiz drew him away for good.
These days the map shop is occupied by Lush dispensing bath bombs and other smellies, Stanfords having correctly deduced in 2018 that cartographic digitalisation was best confronted in a downsized store just round the corner.
1956: A regular part in Hancock's Half Hour finally raised enough cash for 30 year-old Kenneth to be able to move into his own flat. He paid £800 and on 25th March moved into 817 Endsleigh Court on Upper Woburn Place, again one street back from the Euston Road. While here he played the part of Private James Bailey in the very first Carry On film and also switched his radio allegiance to Beyond Our Ken. His house moves then come thick and fast. [map]
1959: Queen Alexandra Mansions, Hastings Street, King's Cross WC1 1960: 76 Park West, Kendal Street, Edgware Road W2 1963: 62 Farley Court, Allsop Place, Marylebone NW1 1970: Queen Alexandra Mansions, Hastings Street, King's Cross WC1 again
Kenneth Williams' officialblue plaque is at Farley Court, a mansion block on the east side of the housing conglomerate surrounding Baker Street station. He loved the view from the 9th floor, writing in his diary ‘My bedroom looks out over Regent's Park. The trees are turning now and the sight is beautiful. I can see all the traffic twinkling down the Marylebone Rd. It's all so marvellous, I could cry.’ But there was a downside in the street immediately below, specifically ‘the nits crowding round outside the waxworks. How I loathe them and Madame Tussaud’.
Those nits are still there, both the end of the queue snaking round the building for admittance and the tourists pouring out of what used to be the Planetarium having spent a fortune in the shop. They linger on the pavement, shelter in Farley Court's lobby and generally get in the way of things, unsure which iconic attraction to visit next. The traffic noise remains bad and this soon niggled the ever-crabby Kenneth Williams. But it was the increasingly unaffordable rent that eventually drove him out, that and the opportunity to grab a flat immediately opposite his elderlymother, who despite not being in the best of health would ultimately outlive him.
1972: Kenneth's last move was to yet another mansion block, this time at 8 Marlborough House on Osnaburgh Street, two minutes north of Great Portland Street station. A friend once described it as 'punishingly spartan', as if living here were more a trial to be endured than a reward for a successful life. A multitude of media appearances followed, each an opportunity to pay the rent and to bask in brief adulation, and whenever he recorded Just A Minute he loved to say that he'd "come all the way from Great Portland Street". But health issues dragged him down, notably an inflamed stomach ulcer, and his diaries record progressive unhappiness. On 15th May 1988 Kenneth Williams was found dead in his apartment following an overdose of barbiturates, the coroner ultimately unable to decide if it was accidental or suicide, and alas at the age of just 62 the talented, waspish boy from King's Cross was taken from us.
Kenneth Williams' final flat no longer stands, having been demolished in 2007 to make way for the Regent's Place development. This shiny glass 'innovation campus' beside the Euston Road is about as unKenneth as you can get, all forward-looking and mirthless, so don't waste your time coming here if you want to celebrate his 100th birthday today.
Better ways to celebrate include:
• Several programmes have appeared on the iPlayer including a 90 minute documentary, his star-packed Wogan stand-in, a collection of Parkinsons, a 1975 tour of Bloomsbury, and that Comic Roots I mentioned.
• Six hours of archive programming are being broadcast today on Radio 4 Extra. Six hours! There are 23 segments altogether, from Desert Island Discs to Round the Horne, plus several short interviews with superfan Wes Butters. From 6am to noon they're all being broadcast separately, then repeated from noon til six and six til midnight in one mega-downloadable chunk.
• You may remember Wes Butters as the Radio 1 chart show's youngest ever DJ in 2003 aged 23. He's now obsessed by Williams, so much so so that he sneaked into Osnaburgh Street while it was being demolished, acquired all Williams private papers off his godson, has written a coffee table book and has made a biographical film premiered earlier this month at the Cinema Museum. Go Wes.
• I skipped over Kenneth's ongoing contribution to British television, but Ian Jones has just published a 12000-word analysis on his new blog so best read that.
• Or grab a copy of Kenneth Williams' agonisingly frank diaries, as edited by Russell Davies, for four decades of retrospection from before he was well known to after he thought he was worthless. We all know better, but alas it's too late for that.
