Showbusiness Career
| “ | You have to understand that was perfect for the time that he appeared. It was a brilliant thing, this black Yorkshireman who played football with Doncaster Rovers, who'd had the wartime experience of white Yorkshire people, who talked like them, who thought like them, but who just happened to be black. And when he came along it was astounding to hear this bloke talking like "Eh up, flower, eh. Hey, have you ever been to supermarket where they have the broken biscuits?". I think it was a huge culture shock for people. And Charlie exploited this to the full. | ” |
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—Lenny Henry in Windrush - The Irresistible Rise of Multiracial Britain |
Following his retirement from the game in 1959, Williams tried his hand as a singer in local working men's clubs, but it was his comic chat between the songs that was best received, so he decided to move into comedy full-time. He eventually became Britain's first well-known black television comedian. He came to prominence from 1971, when he began appearing regularly on The Comedians. The show broadcast stand-up routines from relatively unknown but often very experienced club comedians, including Frank Carson, Mike Reid and Bernard Manning. The novel combination of a black man with a Yorkshire accent and his first-hand experience of life in the British working class made him unmistakable.
Williams' comedy was often at his own expense, and particularly his colour. He used to respond to heckling by saying: "If you don't shut up, I'll come and move in next door to you". Like other popular comedians of his era, his comedy included jokes about "Pakis" and "coons". His reinforcement of his audience's prejudices and negative race stereotypes was perhaps a necessary product of the environment and time in which his career began, typified by a resurgent National Front, a minstrelsy variety show in the form of The Black and White Minstrel Show on the BBC, and the sitcom Love Thy Neighbour, in which he appeared as himself in one of the episodes, which were made by Thames Television for the National ITV network. Nevertheless, he was a role model for a new generation of British black comedians, such as Lenny Henry and Gary Wilmot, growing up in the 1970s, when almost all others were white.
He reached the pinnacle of his comedy career in the early 1970s. In 1972, he spent a six-month season at the London Palladium; presented his own show, It's Charlie Williams, on Granada Television; appeared on This Is Your Life when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the Batley Variety Club; and appeared at the Royal Variety Performance. In 1973, he presented a one-off special Charlie Williams Show on BBC2, and published an autobiography, Ee-I've Had Some Laughs. He was popular enough at this time to be featured as the star of his own one page comic strip in IPC's Shiver and Shake comic at this time. He was also the host of ATV's popular game show The Golden Shot for a short six-month period from late 1973 to early 1974, although he often struggled to hold together this fast moving live show, and it ultimately had a detrimental effect on his career.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, his brand of humour was becoming old-fashioned, and his career declined. He caused offence to some by defending the Robertson's Golliwog trade mark, and for saying that immigrants to the United Kingdom should conform to the British way of life.
He retired after a final tour in 1995.
Read more about this topic: Charlie Williams (comedian)
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