He was a little kid from the back streets of the Shankill,
who became Britain’s leading exponent of a playwright called Will.

His name was Kenneth, and despite his fame,
he'll often revisit his home city of Belfast and relive childhood days, with his old pal Malachi, over a pint of plain.

But Ken can still recall the insults and hurled stones, the streets he was forbidden to enter by angry men, now a nightmare vision of derelict, burned out homes.

I heard, after sweeping through RADA, 
where he learned to speak with received pronunciation, the former ‘wee man’ got his first break in panto, as the back end of a horse, at the Bradford Alhambra.

I later learned this was a falsehood,
but it’s rumoured he wanted to play that notorious outlaw with the hood,
but couldn’t fire a bow and arrow.

However, he did play one of fiction’s greatest detectives, created by Dame Christie – no, not Miss Marple, the other one, a Belgian.

Before travelling up The River Nile, he steamed over the Orient 
at an express speed, on a Victorian steam train famous throughout Europe.

His gift of the gab even persuaded Dame Judi to try an Ulster brogue,
in his cinematic homage to life-changing childhood days, the movie Belfast.

Malachi, said, ''I remember Ken, that little rogue. 

‘I bought him a shandy in a Loyalist bar, 
and he caused a stir by asking, 
why are you obsessed with a bloodied red hand?’

‘We ran for our lives up the Shankhill, 
and finished the afternoon in the zoo,
where he tickled an elephant, threw manure at a camel, then sang The Soldier’s Song, Eire’s national anthem, to a parrot, called Peckaboo.'

Maybe he’ll play Sherlock Holmes next,
Poirot’s rival in the world of detection, and chase that hound of the Baskervilles across Dartmoor, followed by his pal, Brian Blessed, that big thespian man with the voice of a bear, who climbed Mount Everest.

Or finally track down Professor Moriarty, the master villain,
who appears briefly in Doyle’s desperate attempt to kill off Sherlock, The Final Problem.

So here’s to the kid from those strife-torn streets of Belfast,
who knows what’s next for him, will he cha cha or waltz,
in a BBC Strictly Come Dance?

Or narrate the adventures of that Scarlet Pimpernel,
who was a thorn in the side of revolutionaries in 18th-century France. 

Maybe he’ll play that witty chap Wilde, whose pride led to his downfall,
now that would be a challenge for the former Belfast child,
who came to England, upstaging school kids from Eton and Harrow 

He might get away with being an elderly Robin Hood,
I hear he’s been practising his bow and arrow.