David Benson

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David Benson
Born	11 January 1962(1962-01-11) Oxford, England
Official website

David Benson (born David Hodgson on 11 January 1962) is an English comedian, writer and actor. David was born in Oxford, England and has a sister Miranda and an older brother Jonathan. David changed his surname in 1996 on joining Equity (trade union). He was educated at Park Hall Secondary Modern, Castle Bromwich, Birmingham, and Sutton Coldfield College of Further Education. He went on to gain a Degree in Drama and Theatre Studies at the Royal Holloway College (Univ. of London). He moved to Edinburgh in 1985 where he lived until 2001, when he moved to London where he currently resides^[1].

1 Stage
2 Television
3 Radio
4 References

[edit] Stage

David had various jobs including ‘skivvy’ in a restaurant kitchen and then as an assistant in Scotland’s first lesbian and gay bookshop. From 1990 to 1996 he worked in the Edinburgh-based Grassmarket Project Theatre Company on a series of award-winning semi-documentary dramas, often improvised, ranging from homeless men (Glad, 1990-92), to pensioners (One Moment, 1993) and a young lady whose brother was killed in police custody (20/52, 1995). It was at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1996 that David premiered his first one-man show Think No Evil of Us: My Life With Kenneth Williams. This show was an instant hit with audiences and won a Scotsman Fringe First Award. The show then went on national tour and ended with a brief run in the West End of London in 1998. The show was revived in 2001 and still tours today. Benson claims he will continue touring the show, ‘till I drop^[2].

In 1998 David premiered his second one-man show at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh Fringe, entitled Nothing But Pleasure. It was timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. It consists mainly of a detailed description of the events at the funeral. Nothing But Pleasure was subsequently invited to the Sydney Festival, where Benson and pianist/arranger David Paul Jones performed it at The Playhouse in the Sydney Opera House in January 1999. The show then ran at The Jermyn Street Theatre London in 2000 under the title Mourning Glory. In 2001 after a period of theatrical inactivity David returned to the Fringe and to touring.

He then wrote and performed a sequel to Think No Evil of Us - My Life With Kenneth Williams, breaking a vow he had made in 1998 never to play another dead, camp comic (‘As if I intended to spend the rest of my life impersonating dead, camp comedians!’), turning his attention to the late Frankie Howerd. To Be Frank played The Pleasance, Edinburgh at the 2001 festival. As well as being an examination of the life and career of Howerd, the show, like all of Benson’s work, has a strong autobiographical element: he gives an uncompromising account of his ‘period of theatrical inactivity’ in a sequence that culminates with the uproarious ‘slaughter’ of a collection of ‘irritating television personalities’^[3].

In January 2002 Benson stepped into the breach to play a part in the production of Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist classic Rhinoceros. Rhinoceros toured the UK for the first half of 2002, and then returned for a sell-out season at the Lyric Hammersmith and another sell-out date at the Battersea Arts Centre. It was during the long drives to and from gigs that Benson and Peepolykus founder member David Sant first discussed the possibility of working on a new show together. The result, in 2003, was Star Struck - his fourth one man show, in which he appeared in character as, amongst others, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Noel Coward, and even Judy Garland. David also co-devised and directed All The Rage, the first solo stage show by the legendary Janet Street-Porter, which also premiered at the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe.

Since 2004 he has developed three further one-man shows, premiering each at the Edinburgh Festival, and has also continued to tour with all of his earlier shows. In 2006 he returned to the Festival with the 10th anniversary production of Think No Evil of Us: My Life with Kenneth Williams. Additionally in 2006, he appeared at the Theatre Royal, Winchester in the comedy Same Time Next Year.

In August 2008 his latest one-man show will premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe, as he turns his attentions to Noel Coward again in David Benson sings Noel Coward. This show originated as a cameo impression of Coward in Benson's original 1996 production of Think No Evil of Us: My Life with Kenneth Williams, a cameo which led to his being offered a continuing role as Coward in the BBC television series Goodnight Sweetheart. This in turn led to his doing a number of Noel Coward's monologues and songs on stage, as part of the Hollywood Party sequence in his one-man show Star Struck, which premiered at the Fringe in 2003.

Benson now has nine one-man shows in his theatrical repertoire, and continues to tour with them: Think No Evil Of Us: My Life With Kenneth Williams, Nothing But Pleasure (a.k.a Mourning Glory), To Be Frank: Frankie Howerd and the Secret of Happiness^[4], Star Struck: A Fantasy Celebrity Party, David Benson's Haunted Stage^[5], It's A Plot! David Benson's Conspiracy Cabaret, Why Pay More^[6], David Benson's Christmas Party, and David Benson sings Noel Coward.

[edit] Television

Goodnight Sweetheart (BBC) as Noel Coward, Series Five (1998) and Six (1999)

Reputations (BBC, 1998) reading Kenneth Williams Diary extracts

[edit] Radio

David Benson has been interviewed on a number of BBC and independent radio shows including Mavis Nicholson (in December 1996), Michael Parkinson’s Sunday Supplement, Ned Sherrin's Loose Ends (in February 2003 and in December 2007), Kaleidoscope, and Midweek.^[7]

In December 2002 he appeared in Ruth Draper and Her Company of Characters on BBC Radio 4: an appreciation of the life and career of one of the most important influences on Benson’s stage work.

In November 2003 he performed The Private World of Kenneth Williams, a three-part series for BBC Radio 4, in which he read extracts from The Kenneth Williams Diaries in character as Kenneth. He subsequently appeared in Horne of Plenty for BBC 7 in December 2005, a special 3 hour feature celebrating Kenneth Horne's 1960s radio shows in which Kenneth Williams had also appeared. In February 2006 he narrated the documentary Carry On Filming for BBC Radio 4, which looked at the Carry On films, a series in which Kenneth Williams had appeared more often than any other member of the team.

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

More recently, his facility with accents and ready ability to mimic voices has led him into character parts in radio drama. In July 2006 he narrated the BBC Radio 1 documentary Waiting for Superman, about the D C Comics character, in a cod American accent. He then played various character roles in three independent drama productions broadcast on BBC 7: firstly in a four-part Paul McGann Dr Who radio serial entitled 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 secondly in two new science fiction radio productions in the Scarifyers series: The Nazad Conspiracy and The Devil of Denge Marsh (both of which were three-part serials, broadcast during 2007).

These productions showed his talent for mimicking 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 part, as psychic investigator Alastair Crowley: a comic role with undoubted similarities to his high-camp style on stage, as Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd, in his one-man shows.

In December 2007 he appeared in yet another character part, this time in a drama production for BBC Radio 4: a Saturday Play entitled The Wooden Overcoat, written by Pamela Branch. This was a comedy, set in 1951, in which he played an extremely camp character, even more over-the-top than his role as Alastair Crowley in the Scarifyers serials, and based in part on the slightly hysterical camp character portrayed by Kenneth Williams in some of the Carry On films.

Comedy has been a recurring theme in his show business career: which began with him impersonating two famous 'camp' comedians, Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd; and then progressed to his role in the television situation comedy Goodnight Sweetheart, camping it up as Noel Coward; and has now come full circle with his radio work, doing comedy roles which owe a lot to the high camp style that was popularised by, in particular, Kenneth Williams.