Without wishing to sound harsh, or judgemental, in my opinion the KW biopic
was, frankly, sensationalised rubbish.
It displayed all the same faults as the BBC's rubbish biopic of Tony
Hancock, which Galton & Simpson said didn't depict the Hancock they knew;
and the one about Steptoe, which G&S also slated (on Radio 7) saying they
didn't recognise Harry Corbett or Wilf Brambell from it.
In order to get commissioned by BBC TV nowadays, you have to pitch a
proposal that's contraversial. And the BBC don't care whether the result is
accurate or is a complete distortion. As long as the victim is dead, so
can't sue for defamation of character, their only interest is ratings, not
the truth. Sensational lies get a bigger audience than the truth, which is
considered too dull to broadcast.
The Kenneth Williams diaries were written in private, to enable him to vent
some of his frustrations, and didn't reflect what he was like when he was
working with or meeting the people the diaries make rude remarks about. To
present the diaries as representing a face-to-face conversation was
certainly the crudest distortion which the programme offered.
To my mind the bloke who was in it didn't really capture Kenneth Williams as
I remember him. I did see a rather good portrayal of KW live, on stage, in a
show called 'Think No Evil of Us: My Life with Kenneth Williams', by David
Benson, that gave a more honest representation of him.
Benson also presented an interesting series about KW on Radio 4, that's
still available on CD ('The Private Life of Kenneth Williams'), which was a
genuine attempt to show the truth.
Try Barbara Windsor and Bill Pertwee's autobiographies, which are an
interesting read on the subject of KW (as they recount their recollections
of working with him) if you want to get closer to the real man. And it's not
as if he didn't leave us his own autobiography, too.
'Fantabulosa' proved that you can't base a credible documentary on random
excerpts from the KW Diaries, any more than you could by basing it on random
extracts from 'Acid Drops'.
IMHO, it was muck-raking, not journalism.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul" <plwimsett@...>
To: <just-a-minute@...>
Sent: Saturday, August 21, 2010 4:14 PM
Subject: [just-a-minute] Re: Kenneth Williams Biopic: Fantabulosa!
>
> Apparently either Galton or Simpson felt that the programme didn't capture
what Kenneth Williams was about.
>
>