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Willikins is the butler of Sybil Ramkin and, after their marriage, Sam Vimes. He has been part of the Ramkin household for some time, starting work as a scullery boy. In his role as butler, he is a paragon of civility, only mildly disapproving of Vimes's uncouth habits. Though Vimes remains uneasy with the idea of having a servant, he seems to have accepted the idea.

This is possibly because of Willikin's distinctly non-butler like abilities, as revealed in Jingo. When Willikins temporarily suspends his duties to sign up with Lord Venturi's Heavy Infantry, he soon reveals himself to be an exceptional fighter, and an abnormally violent one at that. During the brief war with Klatch (see Jingo), Willikins manages to kill a number of Klatchians, bite off a nose during hand-to-hand combat and turn out to be an exceptional leader of men in his own right, managing to keep them alive despite numerous encounters behind enemy lines. He would later have a very surprising reunion with his employer, though he would not be nearly as surprised as Vimes. We hear of Willikin's fighting prowess once more in Thud!, when a group of would-be dwarf assassins attacked the manor by tunnelling into the basement. Unfortunately for them, at the time, Willikins was in the ice cellar carving ice, and upon encountering the assailants, makes use of the only weapon close at hand - an ice knife. He manages to keep one alive and hang him on a meat hook by the collar, only to discover that his captive had died from poison ingested before the mission

The origins of his violent tendencies are shown to lie in his youth, when he was a member of the Shamlegger Street Rude Boys. His weapon of choice was an old hat/cap with sharpened pennies sewn into the rim (similar to James Bond's enemy Odd Job, who incidentally also served in the capacity of a butler). According to the man himself, the weapon could take someone's eye out, "with care". Due to his formidable skill in combat, Willikins is also part of the Specials, an auxiliary police force called up by the Watch when more men are required.

Fighting skills aside, Willikins is a very competent butler, embodying the very image of a butler "as fat as butter and as shiny as schmaltz". He coughs in a certain way, he politely requests that Vimes removes his razor before reading out a bit from the Ankh-Morpork Times that he has worked out that Vimes will react violently to, and he quietly but competently goes about his business.

Willikins the butler is not to be confused with another Willikins who was a young actor with Vitoller's Men when Tomjon was a baby.

[edit] Annotation

Willikin is more or less the classic example of the butler/manservant. But he is also the kind of fictional butler/manservant who could...

i) Display his hidden depths to his employer Bruce Wayne by defending the secrets of the Batcave against all foes, with extreme prejudice and great technical competence? In the later Batman stories, there is a suggestion that the Wayne family butler has been in gentlemens' service all his life, save for a few trifling years, in his youth, spent in the British Army's special forces.

ii) In the long-running BBC Radio thriller serial "Paul Temple" (first broadcast in the 1950's and still a favourite today on BBC Radio Seven), the gentleman crime novelist turned Sherlock Holmes is ably assisted by his manservant, a salt-of-the-earth Cockney who can deliver a killer punch in his master's service.