Politics & Power Quote by Kenneth Williams

Williams is defending the rude jolt as a public service. “Peppered or even outraged” isn’t a plea for tastelessness; it’s an argument that audiences drift into complacency unless they’re prodded awake. The provocation he wants isn’t cruelty or nihilism. It’s the sudden, bracing contact with bodies, appetite, and embarrassment: the stuff polite culture tries to deodorize.

The phrase “our national comedy and drama” plants a flag in a very British tradition: music hall, Carry On innuendo, kitchen-sink candor, Shakespearean bawdiness. Williams, famous for both camp precision and frustrated respectability, is essentially saying: stop pretending this isn’t who we are. “Earthy familiarity” is his anti-snob weapon. He’s elevating the common tongue - the pub joke, the nudge, the blunt word - as a form of honesty, not a lapse in standards.

“Clean vulgarity” is the tell. He means vulgarity crafted with skill: suggestive without being explicit, dirty without being pornographic, socially legible enough to land in a mainstream room. That’s why it can be “very shocking”: it slips past the usual defenses. The audience can’t dismiss it as fringe obscenity; it’s recognizably theirs, delivered with a wink. The shock produces “greater involvement” because it recruits the viewer’s complicity. You laugh, you squirm, you feel seen - and that emotional disturbance binds you to the performance more tightly than polite applause ever could.