Yess, I can do it, dear, cos I know I go home and say my prayers! I’m pure

Bill Cotton, now BBC head of variety, warned the monologues must be free from double entendres, but Williams took no notice. The night before, he had packed a year’s supply into a return appearance on The Eamonn Andrews Show. Stanley Baxter phoned to scold him – how could a man who boasted of his virginal sex-life sit and flirt with Roger Moore on national television, and call him ‘a great dish’? Williams was defiant: ‘Yess, I can do it, dear, cos I know I go home and say my prayers! I’m pure.’

C. Stevens, Born brilliant: the life of Kenneth Williams (2010), loc. 3,791