Carry On: Screaming

Oooh Matron! The Carry On film franchise seemed long dead after the critical mauling Carry On Columbus received but that hasn't stopped Hereford Films’ Jonathan Sothcott from giving them another day in the sun.

Variety reports that he's teaming up with Carry On Films' Brian Baker (who owns the rights to the movies) to produce a series of new Carry On films, the first of which will be called Carry On Doctors. The medically-themed film will be written by Tim Dawson and Susan Nickson, who brought us BBC sitcom Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps...

It's not yet clear who'll star in the films, but Sothcott has promised the new flicks will stay true to their British heritage.

"We are making a new entry in the series with love and care: it isn’t a remake or an attempt to reinvent the wheel. We won’t be trying to find new Sids or Kenneths — we’re looking to create a whole new ensemble of brilliant British comedic actors. No stunt casting. No big American stars. This will be British film at its best, as the truly remarkable heritage deserves”, he explained...

Radio Times.

'Who brought us Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps...'

Oh, what's the bloody point?

Kenneth Williams: On The Radio

Marking the 90th anniversary of the birth of a legend of entertainment, actor Robin Sebastian exposes his inner Kenneth Williams to introduce a collection of the Carry-On star's radio highlights.

Including contributions from biographer Christopher Stevens and broadcaster Russell Davies, explore Williams' popular characters like Ramblin' Syd Rumpo and look back with laughter at classic episodes. Discover Kenneth in a darker mood in a radio adaption of a Gogol story...

Williams On The Wireless, BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Three hours-worth - bona.

Please don't let there be too much of Robin Sebastian doing his annoyingly OTT 'impressions'.

Update: A strange collection, eg an episode of Just A Minute with Kenny as the host, not a contestant. More over, he was at his best and his funniest telling stories, the BBC must have so much of this archived, but we heard not one.

Kenneth Williams: Infamy! Infamy!

Personal letters and diaries belonging to Carry On star Kenneth Williams have been acquired by the British Library.

The collection includes 43 diaries and approximately 2,000 letters spanning the actor's career, from the age of 18 until his death in 1988.

It was gifted to the library by his friend and neighbour Paul Richardson.

The 1950 edition of the diary, as well as a letter from the archive, will be on display in the Library's permanent exhibition space later this month.

It is believed that roughly 85% of the archive is unpublished material never before seen by researchers, offering unique insights into the life of a gay man before the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1968.

Williams' was an assiduous diary keeper for more than 40 years, and was known to tease his contemporaries with the words: 'You'll be in my diary!', but few have had the opportunity to read them.

"In the pages of the diaries, Williams is instantly recognisable as the acerbic and fastidious character well known to several generations but also, more surprisingly, is shown to be a reflective and poignant observer," said curator Kathryn Johnson.

"The diaries and letters also record the actor's experience of the dying days of the repertory theatre system and the growth of modern celebrity culture, something he seemed both to love and loathe," she continued...

BBC News.

Bona - and it's rather sweet that the British Library is round the corner from Mr Williams' former abode at 57 Marchmont Street (it's right opposite Gay's The Word bookshop, if you're passing).

What Fagburn would love to see next is the uncensored Joe Orton diaries...

PS A suitably depressing as fuck short PM item.

Update: Nice piece in the Telegraph.

Update 2: And true to form the Express just repeats what everyone else has written!

Kenneth Williams: Actually 1984

Kenneth Williams: Happy Birthday Kenny!

While waiting at Singapore Airport in May 1983, a fellow traveler tells Kenneth Willliams; 'You are brilliant!'

Came the reply...

'Tell me something I don't know.'

x

• The Unforgettable Kenneth Williams, ITV1, 12.40pm.

Update: TUKW has not been stored on ITVplayer for some reason, but you can watch it on YouTube here. A great little doc on the magnificent Kenneth's joy and pain. See also Stop Messin' About.

Fagburn's on a bit of a Kenneth Williams trip this year, reading him and about him rescued me. x

PS See also Kenneth Williams: Reputations. On the tortured queen and auto-didact, 'in search of his father....'

Fagburn: Current Mood

Fagburn has been going through what they call a 'rocky patch', but it seems to be sorted, and he will return to Fagburn duties soon. x

Thought For The Day (Not): Rev Richard Coles

“[Going to church] was like going to AA and thinking, ‘I need this but I don’t want to be part of your club.’ I felt this powerful attraction to faith but I rationally didn’t believe it was real. In the end I had to put that to one side. I told myself, ‘I am hungry and this is the food I need to eat.’ So I did eat and everything else began to shift. My anxieties were not in the same order as my connection with it.”

“It is difficult to imagine yourself having to defend and be a public representation of an organisation that seems to discriminate against gay people… We’re in a complicated foxtrot that goes backwards as well as forwards. But if you can live in hope, you can live.”

The wonderful Rev Richard Coles is profiled in The Times today.

His autobiography, Fathomless Riches - alternative title; More E, Vicar? - is published next week; “Sex in lay-bys and telling a lie about being HIV might be too fruity for the Church of England, but I’m not going to apologise for telling the truth.”

The Daily Mail are shocked!

Elsie Bitchface is however also adored by the Daily Express; '... a clergyman who won't do Thought For The Day because "I just don't like being preached to over my boiled egg. I can't bear it, I really can't". No wonder he has been dubbed "the atheist's favourite priest".

Not 'arf!

Update: Ex-gay priest Chris Bryant on the hip priest, The Guardian. 'Like Kenneth Williams in a cassock and biretta.' And here she is on cracking form in The Independent...

Sex: The Annual Fagburn Sexiest Dead Men In The World Hot 100 Poll!

1. Bobby Fischer. American chess-playing mastermind.

His face was so pretty he had to cover it up during international tournaments.
Went a bit bonkers at the end.
But then don't we all?
Thanks for the wanks, Bobby!
Checkmate!

2. Elvis. A popular American singer.

3. Tito. A popular Yugoslav communist.

4. Kenneth Williams. A popular English whinger.

5. A token black dude [Subs, can you fill this in?].

For the full list of The Annual Fagburn Sexiest Dead Men In The World Hot 100 Poll you'll have to buy the new print edition of Fagburn magazine.

Nietzsche: Oh, What's The Bloody Point?

'Oh, sweet nothing.'

Felix Dexter: 1961-2013

Thank you for everything and for all the LOLZ!!!, Felix, and for giving Fagburn his favourite - and the most profound - phrase of the 21st Century...

"What is point?"

Diogenes, Ravachol, Beckett, Camus, Gramsci, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Kenneth Williams, Dorothy Parker, Morrissey, Chomsky, Fatso Wilde...
They would have all killed for that line.
It is everything, and it is everything as nothing.
What is point?
x

Fagburn: On Silence

"And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?" - Oscar Wilde, his last words in court

"What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence" - Ludwig Wittgenstein, the last words of Tractatus.

"Whatever you say, say nothing" - Seamus Heaney, the last poet.

"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune." - Noam Chomsky, first and last and always.

"Oh, what's the bloody point?" - Kenneth Williams, his last diary entry.

So pissed off.
Might take the day off.
Cause everything's fucking me off off.
Oh, well, please y'selves!
Cough cough cough cough.
x

Russia: A Little Outburst Of Collective Insanity

Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil...

"But we must do something!"
"So let's do something stupid."
"Shall we be hysterical?
How's being hysterical and hypocritical with you?"
"Fine by me - Russia Russia Russia bad bad bad bing bang bong."
"I feel so much better now, 
thank you."

Probably best if I log off for a bit - lest I get arrested under the new anti-trolling law.

Tell me when the fever's ended.
Oh the despair!
The utter, utter despair.

Bye.

Man is a rational animal. So at least I have been told.
Throughout a long life I have searched diligently for evidence in favour of this statement. So far, I have not had the good fortune to come across it...

Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish.

Kenneth Williams: 1926-1988

"Oh - what's the bloody point?"

The last words in Kenneth Williams' diary, April 14th 1988.
Kenny died 25 years ago today.

Update: Seems only the Mirror noticed this sad anniversary - they put the Carry On Star's Most Memorable Moments online later. 

Sisyphus: Theatre Of The Absurd

"The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labour..."
The Myth Of Sisyphus, Albert Camus.

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."Samuel Beckett.

"If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style."
Quentin Crisp. 

"Kids, you tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try."
Homer Simpson.

"You mean it's all been meaningless?"
The Magnetic Fields. 

"Oh - what's the bloody point?"
Kenneth Williams.

On Success/Happiness/Optimism: Apropos Of Nothing/Something/Everything

"I don't give a toss if people say I haven't fulfilled my promise. I think my values are right but I don't want to impose them on other people. I've been lucky enough to be born in a democratic country where I can say what I like, with parents who were decent, intelligent people, where I'm reasonably well off, and where I've met a lot of interesting people and been to some interesting places. How much luckier can you get?
"Life is a matter of passing the time enjoyably. There may be other things in life, but I've been too busy passing my time enjoyably to think very deeply about them." 

Peter Cook.

"What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."

Bob Dylan. 

"I believe the key to happiness is: someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to."

Elvis.

"Whether a person feels positive or not is kind of a comment on their personality and of no great interest. You can find positive signs or you can find negative signs. How you evaluate them depends on something that happened in your life recently or something like that. There's no objective way to do it. The important thing is you try to commit yourself to making the positive signs more real. Suppose you felt that there's 99 percent of a probability that human civilization is going to be destroyed in the next hundred years, but one percent chance it won't be, and that one percent offers some opportunities to do something. Well, you commit yourself to that one percent."

Noam Chomsky.

"Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, 
A medley of extemporanea; 
And love is a thing that can never go wrong; 
And I am Marie of Romania."

Dorothy Parker.

"Fuck' em."

Mick Jones.

"Oh, what's the bloody point?"

Kenneth Williams. 

"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will."*

Antonio Gramsci. 

* There's some debate as to whether Gramsci ever said this, and it's nicked off someone else whatever, so don't write in Marxist pedants.

 

Letter Of The Week: Infamy! Infamy!

Gay people depicted on British stamps, a definitive list: Emperor Hadrian, Kenneth Williams, Freddie Mercury, King James I, Antony Sher, Ian McKellen. Gay fictional character: Albus Dumbledore (depicted twice). More or less bisexual people: Shakespeare, Lord Olivier, Dame Daphne du Maurier, Alexander the Great, Virginia Woolf, Mary Wollstonecraft, David Bowie. Then there is that treacherous category, "never married": Admiral Robert Blake, Marea Hartman, Eleanor Rathbone, Robert Boyle, MR James, Joan Mary Fry, the last two appearing in the series that includes Alan Turing, whose commemoration sparked this discussion. It is certainly surprising that Royal Mail has yet to get around to Oscar Wilde.
Regarding gay actors (Many gay actors still fear coming out, 7 April): Alec McCowen was out gay long before young whipper-snappers like McKellen and Callow. I once asked him about surviving as a gay actor. "Oh, all actors are more or less gay," he said, adding after an exquisitely judged pause, "with the possible exception of Jack Hawkins."
 
W Stephen Gilbert
Corsham, Wiltshire 

Letter to The Guardian.
Continuing this fascinating debate.
I presume he means the Carry On stamps - here's a Carry On Cleo one.  

Fagburn: Question

"Oh - what's the bloody point?"
Everyone is stupid.
You are stupid.
Kenneth Williams was stupid.
I am stupid.

Cameron: Follow That Camel

"Aircraftman Cameron and Sarkozy are in Benghazi taking the applause of cheering tribal warriors. Sarkozy looks a bit nervous, as though scared he might meet the English rugby team at a dwarf hurling evening. Cameron looks a bit dazed, probably not sure what applause is. Aaah, that heady moment of triumph! Just like George Bush and Mission Accomplished!

"Now those delightful oil contracts to sort out.

"Elsewhere, Libyans who foolishly fail to agree with them are being bombed to pieces by NATO. Presumably, once anyone who might hold a different view is dead, it will be safe to hold a democratic election."

Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan.