Monday 6 June 2022

Footnote

 There is only one reason to mark the birthday (in 1918) of the comic actor Kenneth Connor, stalwart of many a Carry On film: he is the subject of a particularly fine footnote. It occurs in Roger Lewis's hugely enjoyable biography of another Carry On stalwart, Charle Hawtrey: to the name 'Kenneth Connor' is appended the following note – 
'What a pain in the arse he is. The only person I know who can abide Connor's going-to-pieces, swallowing-hard, nervous-wreck act is Jonathan Coe, who wrote an entire novel on the subject, What a Carve-Up! (1994). His The House of Sleep (1997) was filled with allusions to Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, the Baker Street set for which at Pinewood was used for exterior views of the Hawtrey character's boarding house in [Carry On at YourConvenience. I await Coe's homage to The Shoes of the Fisherman, no doubt to be called Kiss My Ring!'

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