Stop Messin’ About!

Prayer for the Day presented by Mark Oakley, Dean of Southwark.

Good morning.

Earlier this year I was delighted to put together five morning services for Radio 4 on the life of the actor and comedian Kenneth Williams, whose 100th anniversary of birth falls this year. This followed a programme on Radio 4 called As the Actor Said to the Bishop, in which Bishop James Jones dug out some old recordings he had produced many years ago in which Kenneth reads stories from the Christian gospels.

I knew Kenneth for the last months of his life. He took his Christian faith very seriously. Though often waspish and sometimes acidic, a person who could be desperate to be looked at and yet terrified of being seen, he knew that Christianity called out to the better part of himself and gave him a peace that the entertainment world never could.

He was a man for all emotional seasons – outrageous, melancholic, the heart of a party, a solitary at home. His exaggerations rather gave him away. He loved to tell stories that punctured pomposity. He was man who made many people laugh till the tears fell, someone who helped us burst out of the prim and proper to relish the fun of life, but who, deep down, knew that this life is much more than a mere Carry On and that at some point we need to ‘Stop Messin’ About’. As an actor and as a human being he knew that life asks us to pay attention, and that in return attention will pay us back.

Today I’m praying for all those who make us smile and laugh, those who show us our foibles and silliness, and those who may be helped by our own smiles today.

Amen.