Inseparable: Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor in Carry on Christmas
Credit: Fremantle Media/Shutterstock
It was no surprise that the first wave of obituaries for Dame Barbara Windsor, who died this week at 83 following a six-year struggle with Alzheimer’s, featured images of scenes she’d shared with Kenneth Williams. They went together like boiled beef and carrots, and were no less London-flavoured than Harry Champion’s song of that name. Williams could hide it well – most of us think of him first in his posh mode – but his birthplace in Barnsbury, Islington was a walkable distance from Barbara’s first address, in Shoreditch. Powerfully different personalities though they were, each saw something local and familiar in the other; an odd-couple friendship that would last 24 years until his death in 1988.