Final Autumn Dates Set For David Benson's MY LIFE WITH KENNETH WILLIAMS

David Benson will bring MY LIFE WITH Kenneth Williams to five venues this October for the final autumn dates of his centenary celebration of the much-missed Carry On star, radio favourite and outrageous chat show raconteur.

The final autumn dates kick off with a return to London's Circle & Star theatre, where the show held its sold-out premiere earlier this year, on Sunday 11 October. The tour then visits Twickenham, Barnard Castle, Mansfield and Walsall, running until 30 October 2026.

In 1996, David Benson took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm with his debut solo show, Think No Evil of Us: My Life with Kenneth Williams, winning a coveted Scotsman Fringe First Award. Thirty years on, and in the year that marks the centenary of Williams' birth on 22 February 1926, Benson revisits his classic performance in a new and revised version of the hit show.

Benson gives an unsparing portrayal of the tormented comic genius, moving from hilarity to self-pity in public and in private. His uncanny portrayal has won praise from Williams' closest friends, including Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Barbara Windsor.

In 1975, at the age of 13, Benson wrote a short story, The Rag-and-Bone Man, for a competition on the BBC children's programme Jackanory. Chosen as a winner from 15,000 entries by Kenneth Williams himself, the story was then performed by Williams on national television.

Benson recalls: “At the time, it was a huge embarrassment to me. I was now associated in the minds of my enemies at school with the most outrageously camp man in England. For a schoolboy desperately struggling with his sexuality in the hostile environment of 1970s Britain, the connection was mortifying. As I found out at school next day…

The publication of Williams' diaries in 1994 later revealed a man every bit as terrified of his sexual nature as the Birmingham schoolboy whose writing had caught his eye.

This new edition includes extracts from the only surviving recording of that 1975 broadcast. With characteristic honesty, Benson also tells of the day a visiting BBC researcher inadvertently captured on tape the terrifying reality of his home life: his mother's descent into paranoid psychosis.

Tour Dates

LONDON – CIRCLE & STAR
Sunday 11 October 2026 at 2pm

TWICKENHAM – THE EXCHANGE
Thursday 15 October 2026 at 2pm and 7.30pm

BARNARD CASTLE – THE WITHAM
Wednesday 21 October 2026 at 7.30pm

MANSFIELD – MANSFIELD PALACE THEATRE
Thursday 22 October 2026 at 7.30pm

WALSALL – WALSALL ARENA AND ARTS CENTRE
Friday 30 October 2026 at 7.30pm