David Benson - Radio

Radio

David Benson has been interviewed on many BBC and ILR radio shows, including Mavis Nicholson (in December 1996), Michael Parkinson’s Sunday Supplement, Ned Sherrin's Loose Ends (in February 2003 and again in December 2007), Kaleidoscope, and Midweek.

In December 2002 he appeared in Ruth Draper and Her Company of Characters on BBC Radio 4, which was an appreciation of the life and career of an actress whom he cites as one of the most important influences on his stage work.

Benson has an unusual facility with accents and as a mimic and impressionist. In November 2003 he performed The Private World of Kenneth Williams, a three-part series for BBC Radio 4, in which he also read extracts from The Kenneth Williams Diaries in character as Williams. Subsequently he appeared, also in character as Williams, in Horne of Plenty, a 3 hour special for BBC radio, broadcast on BBC Radio 7 in December 2005 (and repeated in 2008 and February 2011), celebrating the radio shows of Kenneth Horne, in all of which Kenneth Williams had appeared. Then in February 2006 Benson narrated the documentary Carry On Filming for BBC Radio 4, a retrospective of the Carry On films, in which Kenneth Williams had appeared more often than any other member of the team.

All of his radio work connected with Kenneth Williams was commissioned by BBC producer Jonathan James Moore, who died in November 2005, aged 59, without whose support this type of work has dried up for him.

More recently, David Benson's facility with accents and as a voice artist has led him into character parts in radio drama. In the first of these, in July 2006 he narrated the BBC Radio 1 documentary Waiting for Superman, about the DC Comics character, using a cod-American accent.

He then performed various character roles in a number of independent drama productions broadcast on BBC Radio 7 and BBC Radio 4 Extra: firstly in a four-part Paul McGann Doctor Who radio serial titled Invaders from Mars, set in 1938 (broadcast at Halloween 2005), in which (amongst other parts) he made use of his remarkable facility for impersonating famous Hollywood stars by playing Orson Welles; and subsequently in seven new science fiction radio productions in The Scarifyers series, playing comedy parts in character alongside former Doctor Who actors Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) and Terry Molloy (Davros), in the spoofs The Nazad Conspiracy and The Devil of Denge Marsh (both were three part serials broadcast during 2007, and repeated in 2009, 2010 and June 2012), For King and Country (a four part serial broadcast in February 2009, repeated in December 2010, October 2011 and July 2012), The Curse of the Black Comet (a four part serial broadcast in October 2010, repeated in May 2011, which also featured Brian Blessed), and The Secret Weapon of Doom (with Leslie Phillips) (a four part serial broadcast in January 2012, repeated in January 2013).

Despite the death in 2011 of co-star Nicholas Courtney, 'The Scarifyers' series is to continue. David Warner and Philip Madoc have recorded two further serials alongside Terry Molloy, in which David Benson once again plays the character parts. The first of these, The Magic Circle, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in January and February 2012 (and repeated in February 2013). The other, The Horror of Loch Ness, is currently in post-production.

He also plays the recurring role of Panda in the Iris Wildthyme series, a collection of humorous audio dramas released exclusively on CD, which stars another former Doctor Who companion, Katy Manning (Jo Grant), as Miss Wildthyme.

In December 2007 he appeared in another character role for radio, in a Saturday Play broadcast on BBC Radio 4, written by Pamela Branch. This was a comedy set in 1951, titled The Wooden Overcoat, in which he was cast as an extremely camp character, even more so than his role as Aleister Crowley in the Scarifyers serials, based in part on the character known as 'Snide', portrayed by Kenneth Williams on radio in Hancock's Half Hour and in the Carry On films.

These productions reveal Benson's talent for playing character parts in comedy, convincingly portraying not only American accents but also sundry East European and Russian accents, when cast as various mad scientists in the Dr Frankenstein mould. The Scarifyers serials also cast him in one highly camp role, as psychic investigator Aleister Crowley: a comic part with strongly emphasised similarities to his high-camp comedic style on stage, as Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd, in his one-man shows. In the various Scarifyers comedies he has typically played half a dozen character roles in each, filling up the cast by supplying the character parts not played by stars Nicholas Courtney and Terry Molloy, including - amidst his sinister East Europeans - lampooning sundry eccentric titled and upperclass Englishmen.

Comedy has been a recurring theme in his show business career, which began with his impersonation of two famous 'camp' comedians, Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd, then progressed to his role in the television situation comedy Goodnight Sweetheart camping it up as Noël Coward, and has now come full circle with his radio work, in which he plays comedy roles that owe much to the high-camp style popularised by Kenneth Williams. He cites the radio shows of Jack Benny and Spike Milligan as his earliest comedy influences.