I was Quite Happy to be the Villain (Ep 374: Tork Shaw/Kenneth Williams)

Next week would have been the 96th birthday of Kenneth Williams, an incredible British performer who hid queer culture in plain sight on the BBC back in the 1960s. For this week’s episode we’re diving all the way back into the Sewers of Paris archives to one of my very first episodes, a conversation with game designer Tork Shaw. Tork would listen to tapes of Kenneth Williams in the car with this family growing up, and he'd hear something of himself in the bookish, aristocratic, quick-witted gays like Kenneth Williams. Tork didn't quite fit in at school -- everyone around him was sporty and posh -- so he cultivated a caustic wit, modeled on the characters he heard, and despite being a small, unathletic kid, his classmates grew scared of him and he was voted "worst bully" in his class. But by the time he was teenager, he was feeling ready to set that aside. "I didn't want to be mean anymore," he said. "What happens if I let go of everything I've done in the past?" We’ll have that conversation in a minute. And hey don’t forget to head over to mattbaume.com to subscribe to my cute little newsletter. Also take a look at my YouTube channel where I post stories about film and TV history. I just posted a new video about The Golden Girls. And head over to my Patreon to support The Sewers of Paris and watch hours of bonus videos about queer pop culture.