Kenny Everett

Early life and education

Everett was born in Seaforth, Lancashire into a Catholic family as Maurice James Christopher Cole. Everett attended the local secondary modern school, St Bede's Secondary Modern School in Crosby, now part of Sacred Heart Catholic College. He attended a junior seminary at Stillington, North Yorkshire near York with an Italian missionary order, the Verona Fathers, where he was a choirboy. After he left school, he worked in a bakery and in the Advertising Department of The Journal of Commerce and Shipping Telegraph.

While working at a pirate radio station Radio London he was advised to change his name to avoid legal problems. He adopted the name "Everett" from American film comic actor Edward Everett Horton, a childhood hero.

Everett married the singer and psychic Audrey "Lady Lee" Middleton at Kensington Register Office on 2 June 1969. By September 1979, they had separated, and in the mid-1980s, he publicly acknowledged his bisexuality. One of his first boyfriends, a waiter called Jay Pitt, was a match found for Everett by his ex-wife.

Political involvement

During the 1983 general election campaign, the Young Conservatives invited Everett to their conference in an attempt to attract the youth vote. Egged on by film director Michael Winner, Everett bounded onto the stage, wearing the enormously oversized foam rubber hands familiar from his mock-evangelical character Brother Lee Love. He shouted slogans like "Let's bomb Russia!" and "Let's kick Michael Foot's stick away!" to loud applause. (Michael Foot was the ageing leader of the Labour Party at the time).

Everett later said he regretted the incident and that he had taken the foam hands to the rally because the Tories "asked me first". In an interview on Ireland's The Late Late Show with Gay Byrne and Sinéad O'Connor in 1989, Everett was challenged by O'Connor about his support for the Tory Party in the light of his homosexuality and the Conservative's Section 28 addition to the Local Government Act. Everett clarified that he was not a "full Tory", but that he had been appalled by the actions of Arthur Scargill, whom he saw as "inciting violence" and "rebel rousing" [sic] and who he thought looked like "Hitler reborn". He had consequently supported the actions of Margaret Thatcher in opposing Scargill.

He said he would stand up for gay rights if he were asked providing "it was a jolly occasion", but he also felt that being in a minority and in the public eye, he could do more for gay rights by showing that he was funny and human rather than by marching in the streets.

Friendship with Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury and Everett became close friends after meeting in 1974 on Everett's breakfast radio show on Capital FM. Though the pair were never lovers, Mercury and Everett were a staple of the London nightlife throughout the 1970s. By 1985, the pair had fallen out over a disagreement over drugs.

In 1988 Audrey "Lady Lee" Middleton published an autobiography with a foreword from Everett. Shortly after the publication and newspaper serialisation, Everett denounced the book for outing him. The fallout resulted in Middleton and Everett communicating only via lawyers; Mercury reportedly sided with Middleton.

Everett and Mercury reconciled their differences in 1989, when both were suffering with failing health.

Illness and death

Everett was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1987, and he made his condition known to the public in 1993. He died from an AIDS-related illness on 4 April 1995, aged 50. A traditional requiem mass was held at Church of the Immaculate Conception in Mayfair, and Everett was later cremated at Mortlake Crematorium.

Radio London, Radio Luxembourg and Radio 1

Everett's first break (as Maurice Cole) came when he sent a tape to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1962. He was interviewed at the BBC by Charles Fletcher and offered a job as a presenter on the Light Programme, the forerunner to BBC Radio 2. He declined, however, in favour of the less constrained world of pirate radio, where he began his career as a DJ for Radio London.

He teamed up with Dave Cash for the Kenny & Cash Show, one of the most popular pirate radio programmes. His offbeat style and likeable personality quickly gained him attention, but in 1965 he was sacked after some outspoken remarks about religion on air. Like most of the pirate stations, Radio London carried sponsored American evangelical shows and Everett's disparaging remarks about The World Tomorrow caused its producers to threaten to withdraw their lucrative contract with the station. Everett returned six months later, however, before being given his own show by Radio Luxembourg in 1966.

Johnny Beerling, a BBC producer, secretly visited Radio London at this time and observed Everett at work: "I saw this man Everett doing everything. In the old way of doing things, the DJ sat in one room with a script. Someone else played the records and somebody else controlled the sound. Yet I see this man who has control of everything." An audition tape submitted to the BBC was assessed in March 1967 by a panel:

"Member one: 'A pseudo-American voice. Sounds experienced and seems to fancy his luck. Yes.'
Member two: 'By far the most original of the young DJs. I found the stilted bits in bad taste but with suitable restraint and encouragement, Kenny Everett could be one of the BBC's best DJs. Yes.'
Member three: 'Without the hard sell and the occasional phoney American accent, a good pop DJ. Must be made to curb the funnies and the voices. Yes.'
Member four: 'I found the continuous changes of voices irritating and his personality supercilious but he certainly has some talent. Should be available but would need very firm production. Yes.'"

He was heard in May 1967 on the BBC's soon to be discontinued Light Programme previewing the Beatles' forthcoming album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and was one of the DJs on the new pop music station Radio 1 from its launch at the end of September 1967. Everett had struck up a friendship with the Beatles and accompanied them on their August 1966 tour of the United States, sending back daily reports for Radio London. He also produced their 1968 and 1969 Christmas records.

At Radio 1 Everett continued to develop his own unique presentation style, encouraged by producer Angela Bond, who had persuaded her superiors to give him his first programme, although he later reacted against her as a representative of the BBC. Everett's Radio 1 show featured zany voices, surreal characters, multi-tracked jingles and trailers, all of his own creation and compilation. It was Everett who had persuaded Johnny Beerling and station controller Robin Scott, at a lunch meeting before his appointment, of the importance of the new station having jingles. Everett's shows on BBC Radio 1 included Midday Spin, and in 1968 he took over a Saturday show from 10.00am to 12.00 noon.

In 1970, Everett again found himself sacked, this time after suggesting on air that Mary Peyton, the British Transport Minister's wife, had bribed her driving test examiner. The remark was a spontaneous quip, following a news item describing how Peyton had finally passed after many attempts. The BBC thought the comment "indefensible", although shortly before the incident Everett had given a controversial interview with Melody Maker contrary to a BBC embargo preventing him from giving interviews. In negotiations with the record companies and the Musicians' Union over needle time, a limit on the playing on air of commercially recorded music, the MU representatives would complain about Everett, the one BBC broadcaster who persistently mocked them. In fact, in the year after Everett's death, it was stated that the bribery quip was merely the excuse for his canning and that the real reason was because he threatened to go public on the restrictive practices and deals with the Musicians Union that were not only frustrating him and his listeners, but also making Radio One much less popular than the pirate stations it had been set up to displace.

Following an interview on the BBC Radio Solent children's show Albert's Gang, Everett submitted weekly shows to the station that he had pre-recorded at home. This afforded the BBC the opportunity to vet the shows before broadcast. Everett was then heard on various BBC local radio stations before being reinstated at Radio 1 in April 1973. Here he recorded a weekly show from his home in Wales and it went out on a Sunday afternoon at 1pm.

During this time, legislation had been passed allowing the licensing of commercial radio stations in the UK. One of the first, Capital Radio, began broadcasting to London and the Home Counties in October 1973. Everett joined the station and was given a weekend show,(recorded) where he further developed his distinctive ideas. From January 1974, following poor audience figures which in turn followed a difficult start for Capital during a time of industrial strife, the station changed to a more pop based, rather than light music, format, with Kenny presenting the breakfast show with his former colleague and friend from the pirate station Radio London (Big L) days, Dave Cash, and so re-activating the 'Kenny and Cash' show. When Dave Cash moved to the lunchtime slot in 1975, Kenny continued alone on the breakfast show. Everett had a great love of sound recording equipment, in particular using reel-to-reel tape recorders and mixing equipment, often adding sound-on-sound to his recordings and stereo/multi-track recordings of his pseudo-singing voice. These were broadcast on air regularly and he often created his own radio jingles. Everett created many comedy characters on The Breakfast Show with Dave Cash on Capital.

In May 1975 Kenny found early mornings too much for his lifestyle and he vacated the breakfast show to Graham Dene and moved to less high-pressure weekend timeslots at Capital on Saturday and Sunday lunchtimes. Here he further developed his style and his cult following, and featured both what he thought the best in music (Queen, Chris Rainbow) and the worst, which led to the popular Kenny Everett's World's Worst Record Show programmes, later released as an album in 1978, with slightly different tracks. Several shows featured the "Bottom 30": compilations (from listeners' votes) of the world's worst records during this period, including some tracks by well-known personalities not known for their singing, notably William Shatner (Captain Kirk of Star Trek) with his version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "The Shifting Whispering Sands" by Eamonn Andrews.

In 1975 Everett played a pivotal role in getting Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" released as a single. In 1976 he also presented a pre-recorded programme on Saturday lunch-time for Radio Victory in Portsmouth, later providing Captain Kremmen to the station for transmission in Dave Christian's late show.

BBC Radio and back to Capital

On 5 February 1980 Everett made his only appearance on the BBC Radio 4 show Just a Minute where he spoke on the subject of marbles for 90 seconds. The extended improvisation was imposed by Nicholas Parsons as a practical joke.

In October 1981, Everett returned to BBC Radio, this time on Radio 2, on Saturday from 11.00am–1.00pm. During this time, the BBC received a large number of complaints after Everett told the following joke while live on air. 'When Britain was an Empire we were ruled by an emperor. When we became a kingdom we were ruled by a king. And now we're a country we're ruled by Margaret Thatcher.' The show continued until 1983, when he was sacked by Radio 2.

Everett returned to Capital Radio in June 1984, reviving his Saturday lunchtime show. In May 1985, he was called in to replace Graeme Garden for one episode of the Radio 4 game show, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. After Capital split its frequencies in 1988, he returned to daily broadcasting on Capital Gold, as part of a strong presenting line-up including Tony Blackburn and David Hamilton. Everett presented daytime shows on weekdays until 1994, when his health deteriorated to the point that he was unable to continue. During that same year, he was awarded the Gold Award at Sony's Radio Academy Awards for his contribution to radio.

Early television work

Everett's first screen appearance was in the 1965 film Dateline Diamonds which had a plot based around the pirate ship MV Galaxy. He also appeared in several television series, beginning in 1968 with a production for Granada Television called Nice Time which was co-presented by Germaine Greer and Jonathan Routh. In 1970 he made three series for London Weekend Television (LWT): The Kenny Everett Explosion, Making Whoopee and Ev; and he also took part (along with such talents as Willie Rushton and John Wells) in the 1972 BBC TV series Up Sunday.

In 1973, Everett provided the voice of the cat 'Charley' in the Charley Says animated series of public information films.

Everett was the announcer on the original version of ATV's "big box game" Celebrity Squares which ran on ITV from 1975 to 1979.

The Kenny Everett Video Show and The Kenny Everett Video Cassette

In 1978, London's Thames Television offered him a new venture, which became the Kenny Everett Video Show. This was a vehicle for Everett's characters and sketches (his fellow writers were Ray Cameron, Barry Cryer and Dick Vosburgh), interspersed with the latest pop hits, either performed by the artists themselves, or as backing tracks to dance routines by Arlene Phillips' risqué dance troupe Hot Gossip (which featured Sarah Brightman).

Various pop and TV stars made cameo appearances on the show, including Rod Stewart, Billy Connolly, Kate Bush, Cliff Richard, Freddie Mercury, Terry Wogan and Suzi Quatro (see also "Friends" section below) and classical musicians such as Julian Lloyd Webber.

There were also the stories of Captain Kremmen, a science fiction hero voiced by Everett and originally developed for his Capital Radio shows, who travelled the galaxy battling fictional alien menaces, along with his assistant Dr Gitfinger and his voluptuous sidekick Carla. In the first three series these segments were animations created by the Cosgrove-Hall partnership (responsible for the successful children's cartoon series Danger Mouse, among many others). In the fourth series (Video Cassette) Kremmen was featured as live action, with Anna Dawson playing Carla; the segments were comedy shorts, rather than the earlier stories.

Other characters included: ageing rock-and-roller Sid Snot, unsuccessfully flipping cigarettes into his mouth – at one point Everett managed to catch one in his mouth, to the amusement of the studio crew; Marcel Wave, a lecherous Frenchman played by Everett wearing an absurdly false latex chin; and "Angry of Mayfair", an upper middle class City gent complaining of the risqué content of the show, banging the camera's lens hood with his umbrella, and then storming off, turning his back to us, only then to be revealed as wearing women's underwear in lieu of the entire back half of his suit.

He also created the never-seen character of 'Lord Thames', supposedly the owner of Thames Television (the company was actually owned by two conglomerates). The character was often the butt of Everett's rants and was said to symbolise his contempt for senior management at the company, claiming they lived behind an ancient, cobweb-covered door marked as the "Office of Saying 'No'". Thames never disciplined him for these comments, unlike prior employers such as the BBC.

The series ran for four seasons on ITV. The last episode of Series 3 ended with Everett giving a farewell speech as the set and scenery was being stripped down by the crew. The final shot before the closing credits was Everett himself being picked up and placed inside an oversized dustbin.

The fourth series was retitled The Kenny Everett Video Cassette and was more of a comedy programme than the previous three series, which relied more on music acts.

The Kenny Everett Television Show (BBC 1981–88)

Everett fell out with Thames regarding the management of his show, including the scheduling against the BBC's top-rated Top of the Pops on Thursday evenings. The BBC offered him a live-audience sketch-format comedy programme, starting with a Christmas special on BBC1 in 1981, followed by five primetime series. The writing team was bolstered by the addition of Andrew Marshall, David Renwick and Neil Shand, and the production standards were raised by the heavier investment from the Corporation.

Thames Television claimed copyright on Everett's characters, and tried to prevent their use by the BBC. Whilst this action failed, it led to the creation of new characters such as Gizzard Puke (intended to replace Sid Snot), and the spooneristically named Cupid Stunt, a blonde American B-film actress with pneumatic breasts, and played with no attempt to disguise Everett's beard, who told a cardboard cutout of Michael Parkinson lurid tales of life on set with Burt Reynolds and other male stars of the era. Her original name, Mary Hinge, was vetoed by the Corporation as too obvious, and announcers were encouraged to refer to her as Cupid to prevent mispronunciation. Her final action in each sketch was to uncross her legs then swing them wildly to recross them (brazenly giving viewers an eyeful of her racy red lingerie) as she uttered the catchphrase "It's all done in the best possible taste!" Inept TV handyman Reg Prescott became another firm viewers' favourite, as each week he managed graphically and bloodily to injure himself with tools whilst attempting to demonstrate DIY tips.

Brazilian-born Cleo Rocos co-starred in the BBC series. She often appeared in nothing more than frilly underwear and high heels.

Quiz shows

Everett hosted two short-lived quiz shows late in his career, Brainstorm, and Gibberish. He was also a team captain on That's Showbusiness.

Friends and guests

Everett was very popular with his peers, and many major stars of television, radio and pop music counted him as a friend. This led to many celebrity guest appearances across all his television work. Terry Wogan – a long-time colleague from the early days at Radio 1 – made numerous appearances on both Thames and the BBC shows, as did Billy Connolly and Lennie Bennett. Other stars who parodied themselves included Rod Stewart, Kate Bush, ABBA, the Police, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury.

Commercials

Everett is known to have made at least one series of commercials – he voiced Beeper the Frog for National Express from 1980.

Bloodbath at the House of Death

Everett made one foray into film with 1984's Bloodbath at the House of Death, a spoof of Hammer horror films, which was penned by Everett's usual writing partners Barry Cryer and Ray Cameron (who also directed the film). Vincent Price was featured as the villain, credited only as the "Sinister Man", and a number of other popular comedians and actors also appeared, including Pamela Stephenson, Gareth Hunt and Don Warrington. Several regulars from Everett's television series also appeared. The film was not a great success, despite winning "Best Science-Fiction Film" at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film (tied with Videodrome).

Shows presented

The following is a list of the main shows Everett presented.

Radio

Television

Music career

In 1977, Everett collaborated with Mike Vickers to release the single Captain Kremmen, based on one of his comedy characters. It peaked at number 32 in the UK charts on 12 November. In 1983 Kenny Everett released the single Snot Rap, ostensibly sung by two of his tv characters, Sid Snot and Cupid Stunt. This would peak at number 9 in the UK charts for the week ending 16 April.

Tributes, portrayals and books

In 1981, Everett co-wrote a semi-fictitious autobiography entitled The Custard Stops at Hatfield. It was published by Willow Books, William Collins, Sons, in September 1982.

Everett is the subject of a 1997 episode of the Thames Television series Heroes of Comedy which covered his life and career from his beginnings on pirate radio up until his death. Celebrities such as Steve Wright, Cliff Richard, Cleo Rocos, Barry Cryer, Jeremy Beadle, Terry Wogan and Barry Took appear and talk about their experiences, collaborations and friendships with Everett and his influence on them.

On 18 November 2007, ITV1 broadcast a tribute show to Everett entitled Licence to Laugh. This celebrated the 30 years since he first appeared on ITV with the Kenny Everett Video Show (Thames Television). Friends and colleagues revealed what it was like to know and work with the man they affectionately dubbed "Cuddly Ken". Additionally, contemporary celebrities such as Chris Moyles and Chris Tarrant talked about their love for the outrageous entertainer and discussed the ways in which Everett had influenced them and their work. It also featured archive footage.

The documentary When Freddie Mercury Met Kenny Everett, broadcast on Channel 4, tells the story of the relationship between the two men from the moment they met in 1974 when Mercury was a guest on Everett's radio show, through gay lovers and drug taking to when both died of AIDS. It features affectionate interviews by many people who were close to him.

In March 2010, the BBC confirmed that it was producing a 90-minute TV biographical film called Number One in Heaven, to be written by Tim Whitnall and focusing on Everett's unhappiness at secondary school.

On 3 October 2012, the BBC broadcast a 90-minute TV biopic called The Best Possible Taste which focused on the performer's relationship with his wife, singer Lee Middleton. Oliver Lansley played the part of Everett and Katherine Kelly that of Middleton.