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      There remained the unpleasant matter of the inquest. It was held in mid-June, two months after Kenneth’s death. Startlingly, his GP, Dr Carlos Clarke, testified that during the previous November he had given his patient 100 sleeping tablets, but not the kind that had killed him. But the most important testimony came from the London Hospital pathologist, Dr Christopher Pease, whose initial, inconclusive findings led to a second battery of tests, some of which had a bearing on Kenneth’s general state of health. Dr Pease now resides in New Zealand, but remembers the case with impressive clarity:

      Dr Christopher Pease: ‘I was fully aware of Kenneth’s fame and had watched all of the Carry On series. As a doctor and pathologist, however, we are trained from a very early stage not to allow our own emotions to interfere with the task at hand. On that day Kenneth was one of fifteen autopsies I performed in several different areas in and around London, so my examination needed to be precise and comprehensive for future reference. I was particularly aware of the contention around Kenneth’s sexuality and made a specific decision not to examine parts of Kenneth’s anatomy which were not relevant to his death, choosing to perpetuate his privacy in that area.

      ‘The pills he took were Mandrax; these are a mixture of amphetamine and barbiturate. I have no idea how many pills he took. Kenneth was known to have a large collection of various medicaments and drugs, all of which were labelled and available for him to self-medicate when he chose to do so. I think he was known to be rather hypochondriacal. The bottle containing the remaining Mandrax tabs was unlabelled, in stark contrast to all of his other bottles. The levels of amphetamine and barbiturate in his blood were not a fatal dose of either compound, but in combination were lethal.

      ‘After the inquest I was besieged with reporters, almost all of whom misquoted me (apart from the Sun, as far as I remember). When asked if I thought that he had killed himself, as the Coroner had left an open verdict, my reply was, “It is most unlikely that an adult, if compos mentis, would take an accidental overdose.” There had been no evidence that he wasn’t, despite his fear of surgery for his gastric ulcer in the next week or two.’

      As for the general state of Kenneth’s body, Dr Pease recorded a strikingly favourable general impression, blighted by one fairly horrific condition.

      Dr Christopher Pease: ‘There was no mention of changes related to smoking or drinking in my autopsy report. There was no sign that he had damaged his body with either habit. In fact, Kenneth was in extremely good health for his age. In particular, he had a totally healthy heart. I have performed over 2,000 autopsies, and Kenneth’s coronary arteries were the most pristine of them all in the same age group, as healthy as a 20-year-old’s, in fact! There was no evidence of liver disease, and all other organs appeared healthy.

      ‘He did, however, have a very large (35 mm), deeply penetrating posterior (at the back of the stomach) gastric ulcer, and this was adherent to his pancreas. The stomach wall was intensely congested and inflamed. These findings were likely to be a combination of true inflammation of the stomach and barbiturate effect. Undoubtedly this ulcer would have been extremely painful and would have produced intense upper abdominal and back pain. There was no evidence to suggest the ulcer was malignant.’

      From this it is distressingly clear that Kenneth had in no way exaggerated the intensity of his bodily sufferings. The pains he’d endured were every bit as severe as he said they were. In the event, the Coroner, Dr John Elliott, clung to the letter of the law, insisting, in the words of the Daily Mail’s report, that ‘there was no evidence to show why he took the lethal dose of sleeping pills’. No suicide note, in other words, or equivalent message of intent. How much weight was attached to Kenneth’s diary entries cannot now be known. Only the last volume, for the early months of 1988, had been examined in any case. So the Coroner cannot have seen the diary entry for 30 August 1987, which reads in part: ‘All that is in my mind now is the way to commit suicide…’, or indeed for 5 October 1987: ‘Counted my capsules of poison and I have got over 30 so there should be enough to kill me.’ On the other hand, the entry for 22 March 1988 (only three weeks or so before the death) was available to be seen and interpreted: ‘Came back to flat & got out the Sodium Amytal & then had cold feet. Took 2.’

      Michael Whittaker: ‘I think he did commit suicide. Paul Richardson doesn’t think so, and obviously the Coroner didn’t, so we have to accept the Coroner’s verdict. But he always said he would. The idea of ageing or losing faculties didn’t appeal to him at all.’

      One factor that seems to complicate the argument is Kenneth’s will, in which he shocked the world by distributing

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