David Benson will give five final autumn performances of his solo show My Life With Kenneth Williams this month, starting at Circle & Star in London on 11 October and ending in Walsall on 30 October 2026.
David Benson returns to Circle & Star with My Life With Kenneth Williams on Sunday 11 October at 2pm. The show had its premiere at the same venue earlier this year, and those performances sold out. Four more dates follow, in Twickenham, Barnard Castle, Mansfield and Walsall.
The run marks two anniversaries. Kenneth Williams was born on 22 February 1926, so 2026 is his centenary. It is also 30 years since Benson first played him. That was in 1996, at the Edinburgh Fringe, in Think No Evil of Us: My Life with Kenneth Williams, which won a Scotsman Fringe First. The current production is a new, revised version of that show.
Benson plays Williams in public and in private: the star of the Carry On films, radio and television chat shows, and the unhappy man away from them. Two of Williams’ close friends, Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Barbara Windsor, praised the portrayal. Windsor’s verdict was: “How did you know all that? That’s just what it was like having dinner out with Kenny. A bloomin’ nightmare!”
The two men’s paths first crossed in 1975. Benson, then 13, wrote a story called The Rag-and-Bone Man for a competition on the BBC children’s programme Jackanory. Williams chose it as one of the winners from 15,000 entries and read it on national television. Benson has said that at the time “it was a huge embarrassment to me.”
The revised show includes extracts from the only surviving recording of that broadcast. Benson also recounts the visit of a BBC researcher whose tape caught his home life as it was, including his mother’s descent into paranoid psychosis.
The producers, Suzanna Rosenthal Productions and Little Jester Productions, have released a video interview in which Benson talks about the show.
Benson’s other solo shows have covered Frankie Howerd, Dr Johnson, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the Lockerbie bombing. He played Noël Coward in the BBC comedy Goodnight Sweetheart and gave 1,015 performances in the National Theatre’s One Man, Two Guvnors. Most recently he toured the country with Jack Lane in Dad’s Army Radio Show.
The final autumn dates, all in 2026:
- 11 October, 2pm: Circle & Star, London
- 15 October, 2pm and 7.30pm: The Exchange, Twickenham
- 21 October, 7.30pm: The Witham, Barnard Castle
- 22 October, 7.30pm: Mansfield Palace Theatre, Mansfield
- 30 October, 7.30pm: Walsall Arena and Arts Centre, Walsall
