Tatty Bye dear old Doddy
'In life, we all try to do the right things. Sometimes, we get it right and sometimes we don't get it quite right. But I'd like to think I've done some good.' (Ken Dodd)
Ken Dodd did some good. In fact, he did a whole lot of good for a whole lot of people over a period of seven decades. And he was still doing it at the age 90, still packing out the theatres, still bringing joy and happiness to many.
I pay my own tribute to Ken below, mixed with the words of others, in an attempt to present some kind of understanding of this remarkable man.
It will be a sad day when Sir Kenneth Arthur Dodd is laid to rest, but a joyous celebration of a beautiful life too. Doddy has been with me my entire life. He was always around, like an eccentric uncle. He was always on television or radio, and he was always 'on.' He was a welcome presence, a licence to kids, young and old, to have fun. He was always fun. And he'll be missed. Greatly. He was loved, and gave love, when he was with us and he will be lovingly remembered, forever with us. We'll never forget Doddy.
Ken Dodd was a force of nature – a cheeky master of the one-liner who spread happiness in shows that lasted until the small hours.
Ken Dodd was instantly recognizable for his mop of mad, unruly, sticky-up hair and his big, crooked, sticky-out teeth. There was something ... not quite right about his appearance, something surreal, but utterly disarming and quite endearing. He had a razor sharp wit and was so quick with his words (watch the footage of Ken Dodd with The Beatles and see how respectful, but slightly defensive the sharp-tongued John Lennon is, standing to the side with folded arms. But still laughing at Doddy's quick-fire jokes). But Ken was benign. Known affectionately as 'Doddy.' His peculiar appearance removed the considerable threat that his quick-wit and tongue possessed, and gave Ken the licence to run amok with his audience. All were on the same side, a parliament of merry souls, an orgy of happiness. He was deliberately and consciously unthreatening, a friend, a member of the family, like that eccentric uncle every family has, only much funnier.
“Here I am folks, I'm harmless. I'm just going to tickle your minds and try to make you laugh.”
(Ken Dodd, on the silver thread connecting artist and audience.)
And that's exactly how he was, harmless and disarming, establishing a rapport with the audience, a warm and open embrace to release the joy and happiness within each and all. But he didn't force anyone to laugh, he released the inner joy we all possess.
Ken Dodd was born in Liverpool on 8 November 1927 and made his professional show-business debut as Professor Yaffle Chuckabutty, Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter at the Nottingham Empire, in September 1954. He later said, "Well at least they didn't boo me off". His last performance was in his beloved Liverpool, on 28th December 2017.
'Ken Dodd was quite simply a master at making people happy. His shtick – childlike, cheeky, saucy; anarchic and egalitarian – was machine-tooled to disarm our cynicism, and Dodd was relentless in its application. A titter forever playing on his lips, he’d defy you to keep a straight face, to resist the silliness.'
You couldn't resist. It was physically impossible. Each daft joke was another rabbit punch to the funny bone. Eventually, you would lower your guard and he would get you, whether with a joke, a line, or a flight of nutty fancy. All these things and more would come thick and fast. And you'd just join the others in the merriment. And once you were one of the club, you were a member for life. Only the most hardened of sceptics or cynics could resist. The rest of us just gave in. It was easier, and much more fun. “By the end of the night – missed trains and frantic babysitters notwithstanding – nobody wanted him to stop. We had joined the charmed circle of Doddy devotees, the last men standing; we were hooked.” (Pauline Hadaway).
Ken Dodd was a great student of comedy, thoroughly professional, blessed with an amazing talent which he allied to an enormous work ethic. He was an irresistible force. He knew what he was about, he knew what he was doing. And he never got lazy or complacent, but was working on his craft and thinking through his act to the very end. Ken Dodd worked his way up through the ranks of Britain's variety circuit, where entertainers had to learn how to entertain, and quickly, with a combination of jokes, songs and dance. Variety, in other words. Many talented performers came up this way. And Ken Dodd was the last, and almost certainly (in my view and the view of very many more much better qualified than I) the greatest of the them all.
I quote from the article above:
'Dodd was most famous for his longevity – the length of his career, the 42-week span of his record-breaking run at the London Palladium in 1965, but (most of all) for the duration of his performances. It’s a curious thing for a comedian to be known for, but Dodd was a curious fellow. A genius, sort of. A force of nature, certainly. But, more than anything, he was his own man, ploughing a lone furrow in increasing defiance of age and taste.
'I saw only one of his legendary live performances. It was in 2008 and I’ll never forget it, because I made the mistake of thinking I could drive from Glasgow (where I was spending Christmas) to the Liverpool gig and back in one evening. Suffice to say, I was still on the road at 3:30am.'
The jokes people made about the length of Dodd's shows are true: 'I never thought I'd get home!' Dodd’s shows were tests of endurance, and the test would go on well into a fourth, fifth or even sixth hour. “Hey, are you looking at your watch?” he would tease members of his audience. “A watch is no good for you in this show. You need a calendar. We might be finished by Tuesday.”
Ken Dodd was an inexhaustible source of joy and merriment, his shows interminable. You wanted them to end, just to go home, and see if you still had a home to go to. But you didn't want them to end. Most people stayed the course (they came armed with sandwiches and flasks, although I never saw sleeping bags). This was the Ken Dodd brand. His unflagging zest in live performance was a show in itself, transcending the actual material. You would try to remember as many of the jokes as you could – it was impossible to remember more than a mere fraction. But outside of the performance they were never the same. You recollected the jokes afterwards merely to attempt to tap into the collective memory of the experience. The audience would soon be overcome by that 'swept away' feeling. It was the experience you remembered the most, not the material, not the mechanics, not the ways in which he activated the joy within. And even if you could remember Ken's jokes, you had no chance of ever matching his peerless delivery and timing.
“I think he gets possessed,” marveled Denis Norden, “like these revivalist religious groups when the power comes upon them.”
Tributes to Sir Ken Dodd:
Ken Dodd was a comedy legend and one of the most popular entertainers ever, famous for his epic stand-up shows in packed theatres, his tickling sticks, Diddy Men and jam-butty mines. He was the people's comedian, one of the people. A star, certainly, but one rooted in his own little community in Knotty Ash. He died in the house in which he was born, and in which he lived his entire life – 76 Thomas Lane, Knotty Ash.
Legend and inspiration:
Sir Ken Dodd has been described as a "legend" and an "inspiration" as celebrities and fans shared fond memories of the popular comedian.
The tributes from far and wide say it all, from high-brow thespians like Sir Ian McKellen to the 'ordinary' folk whom Doddy loved so much.
Lady Anne Dodd said:
"The world has lost a most life-enhancing, brilliant, creative comedian with an operatically trained voice, who just wanted to make people happy. He lived to perfect his art and entertain his live and adoring audiences.”
Sir Ken's publicist Robert Holmes said:
“He was one of the last music hall greats. There is no one else that comes close.
"He passed away in the home that he was born in over 90 years ago. He's never lived anywhere else. It's absolutely amazing.
"With Ken gone, the lights have been turned out in the world of variety. He was a comedy legend and a genius."
Dara Ó Briain
“Ah, Ken Dodd has died. So happy I got to meet him once, and more importantly, saw him do one of his incredible 5 hour shows. He was an education to watch and, afterwards, at 1.30 am, he had beers with me in the dressing room and talked showbiz. A privilege, and a loss. RIP.”
Sandi Toksvig said of Sir Ken:
"Best dinner companion I ever sat next to. Don't think I said a word.
"Just laughed and laughed and tried not to drown in my soup. Thank you for the genius."
David Walliams
“Comedy flowed through him like water. RIP Sir Ken Dodd.”
Julian Richings, who has appeared in films such as X-Men: The Last Stand, described him as a "music hall great, entertainment legend, Liverpool pride", adding: "The lights are out in Knotty Ash."
Comedian Russ Abbot paid tribute to Sir Ken:
"Sadly another legend has passed away. An icon, a one-off and a true professor of comedy.”
"One of the greatest. How tickled I am to have known him."
Brian Conley
My intro to Ken 1999 Royal “I’m now going to say two words that will make you laugh Ken Dodd” and he did, he always did, thanks for all the chats and guidance, you always had time for everyone...Dear Doddy tattie bye.😞
Dawn French
“What a wonderful day for sticking a cucumber through your neighbour’s letter box and shouting ‘the aliens have landed!’ Tatty bye Doddy. And thanks . #doddy”
Comic Gary Delaney called him "one of the all time greats", and, referencing the fact Sir Ken's shows could often last for hours on end, added: "The funeral will be held on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and most of Saturday."
Here is Paul McCartney's tribute:
"Farewell to my fellow Liverpudlian the tattyfilarious Ken Dodd. Beloved by many people in Britain and a great champion of his home city and comedy. We met him on a few occasions as The Beatles and always ended up in tears of laughter. Today it's tears of sadness as well. See you Doddy."
Ricky Tomlinson payed tribute to his friend Sir Ken Dodd, saying that “everyone loved and adored” the Squire of Knotty Ash. Ricky told the ECHO:
“It is a very, very sad day. Doddy was a wonderful man – and someone who loved Liverpool with all his heart. And Ken was loved and adored by everyone."
“The fact that a statue of him was put up in Lime Street speaks volumes. The fact that he stayed in the house he was born in his whole life – in his beloved Knotty Ash – is remarkable.
“He will be missed by so many people. The world of showbusiness will come together on the day of his funeral... That will be such a big day for this city.
“Doddy won so many awards and broke so many records – in the 1960s, for example, he had the longest-ever run at the London Palladium. He performed there for 42 consecutive weeks, which is absolutely incredible.
“There will never be another Doddy.”
He's right, you know. It also occurred to me that when we bid farewell to Ken Dodd, we will be saying a farewell to not one but two beloved characters. The end of Ken means also that we will see and hear Dickie Mint no more. And it means that no longer will be hear the soft sentimental ballads with which Ken sent the little fellow off to sleep. A fond farewell to the both of them, I say, and to something of our pasts and our very own selves.
In his own emotional and heartfelt tribute, Liverpool comedian and former Doddy scriptwriter John Martin said: “The loss of my very dear friend and the greatest comedian there has ever been, is such a shock.”
We will almost certainly never see his like again:
“What a talent and one I had the privilege to write jokes for – for 30 years. Writing jokes for Sir Ken Dodd was an honour that I can only compare to being asked to mix the paints for Van Gogh. He was that good and will live on in people’s hearts and memories for ever.”
Ken's Last Show
Hollyoaks actress Annie Wallace, who described him as a "true son of beautiful Liverpool". He was born in Liverpool, never left Liverpool, and played his last ever show in Liverpool. This last show was just a couple of months ago, at The Auditorium in the Liverpool Echo Arena, in his native city of Liverpool, on December 28 2018. It was a fitting end, singing Absent Friends and Happiness to a packed theatre, receiving a standing ovation.
The final scene was filmed backstage by fellow performer on the night, Danielle Louise Thomas:
'I am so glad I filmed this. The very last time our Sir Ken performed. This was the end of his show. I, like others feel extremely honoured to have shared the stage with him during his last performance in the auditorium of the Echo Arena. Here he is singing ‘Absent Friends’ and ‘Happiness’... the standing ovation at the end shows how loved he was.'
https://www.facebook.com/daniellelouisethomas/videos/10156237240877265/?lst=100006829141936%3A504472264%3A1521657583
This film is poignant and priceless, and a fitting epitaph to a man who made millions laugh over a period of decades. Ken understood that he entertained a family audiences, from kids to grandparents. And he understood that the kids would become adults, and the elders would depart as the years went swiftly by. Entire family histories are bound up with Doddy. And he knew that all those present would have memories of those who were no longer with us, still members of the Doddy family.
Absent Friends is such a beautiful song. When he performed this in his shows, if effected a massive mood change, from the joyous and ecstatic to the sad and reflective. And in the context of Ken's last ever show, it is extremely moving.
Here is the Master of Mirth on stage to the end, receiving the last of the countless standing ovations he received over the years, from the people who loved him, and whom he loved in turn. A great comedian, singer and entertainer who will be remembered long and lovingly by all blessed to have known him.
The curtains are closed, the lights switched off, it's the end of an era.
We have lost one of a kind. Ken Dodd was the best of his kind, and his kind was the best.
Danielle Louise Thomas:
“I’ve performed with Ken many times and never thought to film his finale! I’m so glad I did this time x” “He was the best xx”
“A true gentleman who gave me lots of advice and such lovely opportunities to perform in his ‘Happiness Shows’ on numerous occasions. He referred to me as ‘Merseyside’s nightingale’ and ‘Liverpool’s Ambassador of Song’ which always made me smile. He was obviously very funny, but so kind with it and still managed to sustain 5 hour shows at the age of 90. He inspired so many people and was truly unique. There will never be another Ken! Rest in peace Sir, You will be so missed. Thank you so much for bringing ‘Happiness’ to so many people.”
Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital
Ken spent more than six weeks in the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital earlier this year, following a chest infection, leaving at the end of February.
Here he issues a simple, sincere, big-hearted thank you to Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, top people, top place. I can vouch for that, having spent Christmas 2016 there. This is such an important message from Ken. Here he is, the force of nature almost broken, physically weakened, just a humble soul paying a heartfelt tribute. Where would we be without our NHS and all the staff? I know where I am a result of the skill and care of all at the hospital. Ken says it beautifully.
But Ken was not finished. He had plans to come back. As he marked more than 60 years of performing he vowed to his fans: "I can't let the British public down, as long as they keep turning up - I'll be there to give back the enormous happiness they've given me."
“Once I’ve recovered myself I’ll get back to doing the job, which is the only job I’ve ever had,” he said at the time. “While I was in here, I wrote some new jokes, so it should be all right.”
Alas .. some other audience will have the benefit. Just tell them they won't get home before the milkman.
'Ken Dodd became notorious for allowing his one-man shows to regularly spill over into the early hours of the morning. Audiences – at least those with the stamina to stay the course with the seemingly inexhaustible comedian – loved him for it.'
With his trademark shock of unruly hair, erratically prominent teeth and a stage presence that moved seamlessly between the sentimental, the silly and the sublimely anarchic, Dodd often appeared to be an unstoppable force of nature. The potent blend of energy, effervescence and eccentricity that defined his stage persona transformed him into one of the best-loved and most admired entertainers of his generation.
But those qualities also disguised a deeply serious approach to his craft. A keen student of theatre history and comedy, he was widely read in theories of humour and able to quote Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson and an impressive raft of thinkers and analysts on the subject. His 1973 show Ha-Ha offered his own quirky take on the history of comedy, from its origins in Greek theatre to the present day.
He maintained his own “giggle map” of the UK, religiously adding to it after every performance and using it to tailor and finesse his act to target and tickle the funny bone of regional audiences with unerring accuracy. He was a certified comedic scholar and genius, who had the authority to issue Diplomas from Knotty Ash University, no less!
Immersed in the tradition of the music hall and variety, he was a virtual dynamo on stage, a succession of dizzyingly disconnected one-liners dashed off with a relentless machine-gun attrition – a quality that earned him a place in the Guinness Book of Records for telling 1,500 jokes in just over three hours at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre in 1974.
By then, Ken had been performing for nearly 40 years, his interest piqued by an advert for a teach-yourself-ventriloquism book that emboldened him to make his stage debut at eight years old. His final appearance followed 81 years later at the Liverpool Echo Arena in December 2017.
But it was on stage that Ken's mischievousness and warmth fused with alchemical brilliance. His 42-week season at the London Palladium in 1965 retains the venue’s record for the longest run of a one-man show. Increasingly, too, his popularity was matched by growing respect from critics and his comedian peers, although none have yet matched him at his inimitable and unfettered best.'
Ken Dodd, a titan of a vanishing age of British comedy whose fame at its peak rivaled that of the Beatles, died on Sunday at his home in Liverpool. He was 90.
He was famous for his rapid-fire one-liners, surreal flights of fancy, use of fanciful words like “tattyfilarious” and marathon stand-up shows.
In Mr. Dodd’s heyday, in the 1960s and ’70s, his fame in Britain was stratospheric. He played a record 42 straight weeks at the London Palladium, hosted prime-time television shows and hit the music charts with songs, including his signature tune, “Happiness.”
Ken's comedy style
Sir Ken Dodd, master of tickling sticks, Diddy Men and tattifilarious comedy, reduced fans to helplessness with his bucktoothed grin, a shake of the through-a-hedge-backwards hair and a cry of "How tickled I am". And how tickled we were. Ken tickled packed audiences pink for six decades. He was famous for his rapid-fire one-liners and marathon stand-up shows, performing for five hours or more, even into his 80s. He continued to perform right through to his later years, bringing the energy and stamina of a man half his age to his manic routines in theatres up and down the land.
Ken Dodd was the Bruce Springsteen of seaside comedy. 'It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive, sang Bruce. Ken was also life-affirming. There was no hatred or bullying to his humour, no targets to pick on, no scores to settle and points to prove. There's no cynicism here. It wasn't 'edgy' comedy in that sense, and critics would call it 'safe' and 'unchallenging.' He was a family entertainer. He played for entire families, offering something for the oldest and the youngest, and all in between. The remarkable thing is that he tapped into the innocence that survives in all of us. And that was demanding indeed.
I remember this quality most of all about Ken Dodd. I've loved him at every age of my life. I remember Ken Dodd from the moment I could remember anything at all. I can never remember a time that there was no Ken Dodd. Decades later, I see him now as I saw him then - a friend who invites us to laugh together as one. The man communicates directly. He activates the chuckle-muscle. Everyone has one. He makes his appeal to all, without implication. I remember elderly ladies holding their sides and laughing until tears rolled down their cheeks. 'Schoolboy humour,' I heard people say, disapprovingly. They laughed with the rest of us, all the same. And I do indeed remember the lads in school the next day repeating his 'schoolboy' jokes. He was able to encompass all shapes and sizes, the 'family audience,' as rich and varied as any family. But always with a unifying theme. He pointed out peculiarities and particularities, made fun of them, but without being divisive.
Ken Dodd was the Bruce Springsteen of naughty seaside comedy in terms of length too. Even is his late 80s he was putting on five-hour shows. His death, at the age of 90, robs comedy of the last living link to the music-hall masters such as Arthur Askey and Max Miller.
There was no let-up in his astonishing ability to reel off joke after joke, with the rapidity of a machine gun for literally hours on end. In the 1960s he made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the longest joke-telling session: 1,500 jokes in three-and-a-half hours. But there was a purpose at work, it wasn't random. He engaged with and established a rapport with the audience. The man knew what he was doing, and used his knowledge to the benign end of unity and laughter. His act may have looked like a series of ad-libs and remarks, but it was incredibly well thought-out and structured. A well-planned anarchy, organised chaos.
"You have to do a show with an audience and structure the act so that you start with the 'hello' gags, then the topicals, then the surreal stuff. Eventually, you can go wherever you want and say whatever comes into your head: 'How many men does it take to change a toilet roll? I don't know. It's never been done'."
"A performer has to have something in his or her psyche I would call 'a comic imp'... That imp is always with you sitting on your shoulder or in your shadow."
Comedy Persona
Ken Dodd looked … funny … curious … odd … peculiar … not quite normal, with those buck teeth, pop eyes, shock hair. With those startling attributes, Ken Dodd could never be the everyman, the smooth host, the safe pair of hands. He could only ever have been the jester. Comedy wasn't just his job, it was his destiny.
A jester, a clown, that was how he always seemed to be to me. Not quite like anybody else, not normal, someone who stands outside of society and has licence to point out its absurdities, challenging without actually challenging. His peculiar face, persona and props seem out of time and place, a throw-back to some medieval context. But if he could never be everyman, as the jester he could, and did, play for everyman.
And the tributes keep coming ...
'The last great “front-cloth” comic of our times, and the last standing true vaudevillian, Ken Dodd, who has died aged 90, was even more than that – a force of nature, a whirlwind, an ambulant torrent of surreal invention, physical and verbal, whose Liverpudlian cheek masked the melancholy of an authentic clown.
His cheeky little men, the Munchkin-like Diddymen, were inspired by his own plump little Uncle Jack, who wore a bowler, and were played by children before the chaperoning and logistics became impracticable, on the road at least. The whole experience, as the Dodd aficionado Michael Henderson once wrote, was like plunging down a waterfall in a barrel, swept away on the tide of his boundless energy.
This never came across on television, where he appeared merely to be a crackpot zany. On stage, there was something deeply atavistic about his mastery of the revels, his physical appearance of Bugs Bunny teeth (the result of a childhood cycling accident [I thought I could ride a bicycle with my eyes closed. I could. For six yards!]), sticking-up hair like an astonished ice-cream cone, the gentle sway of his shoulders to encompass the house, the transformations from a one-man band (drum, horn, union flag and pig whistle) in khaki fig doing the old variety song On the Road to Mandalay, to the floor-length red Diddyman coat made from “28 moggies – all toms” (sniff, pong, funny face) that is whipped off to reveal a dazzling yellow jacket and smart dark trews for the next segment.
This outrageous Lord of Misrule’s tickling stick, a red, white and blue feather duster, was the equivalent of the medieval jester’s pig’s bladder, laid as in a ritual at the front of the stage then thrust between his legs from behind: “How tickled I am, under the circumstances. Hello, missus [stick a-tremble], have you ever been tickled under the circumstances?” The art of innuendo was his stock-in-trade.'
Doddy’s comedy didn't play by the rules we follow today – it was a mask: 'I am my own double act,' he once said.
'You can catch echoes of Dodd’s style in today’s comedy scene. Pun merchants Milton Jones and Tim Vine have something of his attritional quality, while Spencer Jones displays some of his knowing childishness; and in the work of Vic and Bob, say, or the early shows of Bridget Christie, when she dressed like an ant or Charles II, a measure of Dodd’s straight-bat ridiculousness is at play. But really Dodd’s comedy was not playing to the rules we follow today. His comedy operated as a mask, whereas 21st-century comics are expected to reveal something of themselves. “I am my own double act,” Dodd once said. “There’s the private person who thinks and feels like anyone else, then there’s the performer.” Unlike with most double acts, though, the former got nowhere near the stage.
But self-revelation wasn’t the point of a Ken Dodd performance. The humility he expressed in interviews (“I love people ... The best use of our lives is to enhance other people’s lives”) was real: the shows weren’t about him but about the communal experience he was facilitating, drawing people together as the one community.
'He seemed to work from the assumption – not common these days – that we’re all a community, we’re all kin. And, even if we don’t feel that way to start with, laughing together will make us feel that way in the end. That he could operate on those terms well into the acrimonious teenage years of the new century is a testament to the remarkableness of the man. When the clock chimes half past midnight tonight, anyone who likes a laugh should raise a glass to the man, whom only death could finally persuade to leave the stage.'
Half past midnight? I think it was more like 1am when I finally got out. I can remember people wandering around outside in a daze! It wasn't a watch you needed at a Ken Dodd show, it was a calendar! You lost all sense of time inside the theatre for a Ken Dodd performance. It was always that strange experience of laughing till the sides ached, wanting even more pain/pleasure, knowing that more was certain to come, and yet checking your watch at the same time to see how many hours/days had elapsed and how many more were likely to follow. I wanna go home/I wanna stay! He seemed unstoppable, a force of nature beyond time, a self-creation that tapped some inexhaustible source of joy. It was remarkable how he channeled that energy.
To those who just see the gags and the props, you see nothing at all. If you only saw him on television, multiply your joy to some exponential factor, and then add some more besides. I can't explain it with mathematics and physics (and not only because of my deficiencies in both subjects).
Ken Dodd’s marathon shows were a thing of legend, leading him to be hailed the patron saint of taxi drivers (because everyone missed the last bus home). Stephanie Cole noted that Ken shared two qualities with Stephen Hawking, who died three days after Dodd: both were geniuses, she said, “and both had a very original notion of time.” Ken Dodd changed the sense and shape of reality, as this article indicates.
'Two phenomenal Brits died this week. One, Steven Hawking, seemed to dwell among stars, planets — and black holes — that revealed their secrets only to him. The other, Ken Dodd, stayed firmly on the ground, the joke-telling squire of the jam butty mines of Knotty Ash.
At first glance, the superhuman astrophysicist Hawking, whose fame was global and whom you surely know, and the stand-up comedian Dodd, whose bucktoothed celebrity was even longer-lived but more parochial, would appear to be from different cosmos. One had perhaps the most famous mind in the world; the other would carry a tickle stick (if you have to ask, you could never understand) and make up words like “tattyfilarious.”
But upon closer review, not so much.
Dodd, who died at 90, was a lot more famous in his day than you might think. He thought a lot deeper than it would first appear. And Hawking, who died at 76, was exceptionally funny.
What most people recall of Dodd, whom I saw live several times and whose death felt like the end of something that can never return, are his marathon performances, great feasts of joke telling that would last until the early hours of the morning.'
He would pause the jollity to remind audience members “most of you will have been reported missing by now”. He joked about his marathon shows: “You think you can get away, but you can’t. I’ll follow you home and I’ll shout jokes through your letterbox.” At least I think he was joking. There was something believable about his threats. He claimed that his shows were “educational.” When you finally got home you would think: “That taught me a lesson!”
'Even in his 80s, Mr. Dodd’s shows often ran three to four hours. There was one famous marathon performance in Liverpool where the audience saw the show in shifts, Dodd was known to comically berate anyone leaving before he was done, threatening to chase them down and start telling jokes through the mail slot in their door. It was, of course, a compulsion, a Dadaist impulse, an affinity for absurdist intellectualism, all hidden inside an old vaudevillian.
As great thinkers like Hawking all the way back to Ovid have understood, we don’t live and die. All we ever do is change shape.
A determination never to stop taking a joke also is a reminder, in the most accessible and hilarious way possible, that if you stop doing what you love to do, then you might as well bag everything.
Both of these great men understood that. They appreciated their audience, had no time for elitism, gave back, laughed at themselves, made you think, worked like heck and kept pursuing what they love.
And thus on they live.'
Absolutely! A great lesson in how to live well.
by Chris Jones, Tribune critic.
Sir Ian McKellen has also written a touching tribute to the "irresistible" comedian Ken Dodd, saying that Doddy made him smile "right up to the end."
Ian McKellen begins with a confession: 'Ken Dodd didn't make me laugh on radio, though the factory audiences at Worker's Playtime hooted. The same on television in decades of shows: the studio audience were helpless.' And then … Ian saw Doddy in action and got it: “Then I saw him where he belonged, live, in a theatre.” The gags, the one-liners, the “daft” ventriloquism and the sentimental ballads: “there in front of you he was irresistible: and demanding too.”
“He would announce at the 7.30pm start that the exit-doors were locked. No-one could leave, even to catch the last bus home, until they had given in to Doddy's onslaught of surreal one-liners. For me there was always a moment half-way through when I started to laugh, not because the jokes were funny but because Doddy thought they were and because his very presence and appearance tickled like a tickle stick and I gave in. His theory, even his raison d'etre, was to shift the audience's perception of the world, however slightly, so they left the theatre changed inside. They usually left long after midnight!”
Shifting worlds and perceptions of the world, we are back to the analogy with Stephen Hawking.
“It was the same last year when I went to see him at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge. He was in his 90th year, still trying out a bit of new material. The basic formula was the old one. The doors were locked, the show began, the gags flowed. Supported by Lady Dodd and a click track, he mouthed to the to the Diddy doll on his knee and ended by singing Happiness. It was 12.15am. And we were all happy, which is just what he wanted and had made happen. Then the Dodds packed up the car with his props and costumes and drove the 200 miles home to sleep in their own bed at Knotty Ash.
That afternoon we had met up for tea with Chris Smith, the Provost of Pembroke College where I was lodging. We talked about Shakespeare: after all he'd played Malvolio. But mostly he tried to make us, a tame audience of 2, smile and smiled broadly himself when he succeeded. As he always did, right up to the end.”
— Sir Ian McKellen, London, 12 March 2018
Ken kept the laughter rolling, as he always did, right to the end.
This incredible portrait was drawn with fingernails and a tissue in memory of the Squire of Knotty Ash
A van driver has created an incredible tribute to Sir Ken Dodd by using a tissue to create an amazing portrait of the late comedian in the dirt on his vehicle.
Rick Minns has dedicated the back of his work van to the 90-year-old
The artwork is made by removing some of the mud, grease and dust on unwashed vans using a tissue.
It reads: “... don’t count my money count my happiness”.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/172488049442753/permalink/1914082581949949/
Ken Dodd, singer
It’s sometimes forgotten that, alongside his comedy, Ken Dodd was a singer of songs. In fact, he was a very good singer of songs. Indeed, he enjoyed considerable success as a recording artist. A chart-topper, if you please! In classic light-entertainment tradition, he spliced his knockabout stage comedy with heartfelt balladeering, singing sad, sentimental ballads. “He was the only bucktoothed romantic pop star in the history of the charts.” (Chris Jones). His signature song, 1964’s Happiness, was one of 18 singles to reach the Top 40. Tears was the third-biggest-selling single of the 1960s, behind only by the Beatles’ “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Tears even knocked The Beatles off the top of the charts!
Ken Dodd, actor
Ken was also an actor. He had a brief foray into straight theatre as Malvolio in Twelfth Night at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1971, a performance hailed by The Stage as “outstandingly successful [and that] could well be the envy of any Shakespearean player”. He was also seen as Yorick (in a non-speaking flashback) in Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film version of Hamlet and in Jonathan Myerson’s television adaptation of The Canterbury Tales in 2000. Kenneth Branagh observed that Doddy ‘can suggest ticklish delight and black despair’, and cast him as Yorick in a production of Hamlet, where the character — normally simply a skull unearthed by gravediggers — appeared in a flashback. Doddy also played Malvolio, the tragically pompous buffoon in Twelfth Night, at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1971.
The late comic actor Ken Campbell, only semi-tongue-in-cheek, believed Doddy should have been invited to join the National Theatre. He’d not have been averse to this, and relished the thought of ‘the fear and the discipline of being a real actor in a team’.
‘In the 1960s and '70s, a Ken Dodd Summer season in Blackpool would often begin at Whitsuntide and end at Christmas.
He would play twice a day Monday to Friday, three times on Saturday and he would be filling a 3,000-seat theatre every time, a place bigger than the London Palladium.
Then, on a Sunday, he would play another venue in another town.
Often it would be Blackpool's northern rival Scarborough. That's more than a million paying customers in total.’
By David Sillito, Media and Arts Correspondent
'Occasionally, in old recordings, you get a glimpse of the audience and see how many of them were older women and relatively young children. He needed to find a way of making them all laugh. The solution was the torrent of gags.'
He had a gag for every occasion and would usually try out six new ones in each performance. He kept voluminous note books of jokes, and a record of how they had gone down, and where, and how long the laughter.
He aimed for, and achieved, universal appeal. That was quite an achievement. I remember well the barrage of jokes and one-liners, the stories of strange characters who were all somehow very familiar (every family had one, or more than one). I remember the odd lines that would seemingly come from nowhere, relating to nothing at all that had gone before. Lowbrow, they say, but this was surreal and abstract at times, at a very strange tangent to the universe. 'And now for the highlight of the show. Release the goats!' he would bellow. I still have no idea what that meant, if it meant anything at all. I do know he constantly conjured up a very bizarre mindscape. The jokes and puns and bizarre words were seemingly endless. I remember trying to explain to someone what was so funny about Ken Dodd - talk about a hopeless task! Hercules had it easy! I mentioned 'release the goats.' I can still see the pained expressions on faces. 'Release the goats! What does that mean?' No idea, to be honest. It's just funny .. at least when Ken does it.
“One after another they poured down at you. If three missed their mark, then the fourth would get you. All around you would be the sound of sustained laughter, which seemed to make everything that bit funnier.”
Ken Dodd's style of humour was considered dated and old-fashioned. I don't know why. He continued to pack theatres to the very end.
“There was a reason why, when every one of his contemporaries had long since retired, he was still filling theatres - this was comedy that was broad, silly and brilliantly judged. He could be slightly saucy but knew exactly how to deliver it to his family audience.”
His act was manic, mad but perfectly measured. Ken Dodd was a reader of people and of life. He had profound psychological insight into comedy and into the necessity of laughter and joy. He was also thoroughly professional who thought deeply about his craft.
“Standing in the wings would be his fiancee Anne, checking off the jokes to ensure that people were getting something relatively fresh.” He was at the end what he was at the beginning, but the act never became sterile. He was forever adjusting and tweaking and adding. He remained fresh at 90. And people turned up in droves to see him.
Here's an important point to grasp: there was no anger, no division, no malice, no threat, no animosity, no ulterior motive, no political 'point' to Ken Dodd's comedy. To some that makes it 'safe,' an evasion of real-world issues, an escapism that leaves the bad world of pain and suffering unchanged. The important point for such critics is not to make people forget their troubles and feel happy for a little while, but to expose the origins of those troubles and demand their resolution. From this perspective, Ken Dodd's comedy is complacent and cosy, making people comfortable, for a while, in their misery. I'm ... not so sure this is true. There is a need to separate different things here, and avoid pitting incommensurables against the other. I know well the injustices of the world. But I've never much cared for satire. I've seen satire sneering at the world since That Was the Week that Was and onwards. I don't mind seeing authority brought down a peg or two, it's probably very healthy in a society. I'm not at all sure it has ever made any difference. On the contrary, I see a lot of clever folk sniggering at how dumb politics and people are, Reagan and Thatcher up to Trump, yet having nothing like an effective politics with which to resist them, let alone constitute an alternative. I'd like to see an effective politics checking power and authority. I remember John Cleese being interviewed admitting that Monty Python, for all the sharpness and cleverness, made not one jot of political difference in the world. So what if Doddy left the political world unchanged? He didn't leave people unchanged. Or unmoved. That's the important thing. Just my view, simple well-read lowbrow as I am.
In an interview on the BBC's Late Night Line-Up, Ken Dodd was asked about the satire boom, now the big thing in comedy.
“He was scathing. It was, he said, the difference between wit and humour. Wit, he felt, was barbed, with something unpleasant. Humour was about bringing people together.
Ken Dodd was always on the side of humour.”
It's a contentious issue. I'm all in favour of an effective politics challenging the arrangements of an unjust and iniquitous world. But I don't care for satire, it bores me in the way it panders to pre-existing political positions. It doesn't reach out and build bridges between alternate platforms. And I don't find it particularly funny, either. Or clever.
There is a danger of devaluing the 'edgier' comedians, playing the apolitical off against the political, which itself becomes a very political stance in favour of the status quo. But there is also a danger of underestimating not merely the appeal of Ken Dodd's humour, but the nature of it. To see it as merely safe and complacent, appealing to the known and the familiar, is to miss its true character as affirming a communal identity and experience. Ken Dodd seemed to recognize the truth that the human species is a familial species, life as a pact between the generations.
Gail Walker states the point well: Ken Dodd’s skill was to make people actually laugh, so different to the ‘political’ routines of today. Ken tapped the human roots underneath politics, but for a unifying purpose.
'We shall miss Dodd but, more importantly, the style of comedy he represents.'
“The nation rightly mourns Sir Ken Dodd, our last connection to the golden age of music hall, variety and that now forbidden term 'light entertainment'.
When Doddy was doing his act without props, as it were, he was a joy to behold. As a stand-up comedian of the old school - famously 'standing up' for five solid hours in his later years - joke after joke, absurdity after absurdity, the essence of his routine was a desire to engage the audience, to make them laugh and simply to entertain.
And this he did for over sixty years, showing an admirable determination not to change with the times, to stay true to his mission (and at times Dodd did display an almost religious belief in his own vocation). The Dodd of the 1950s was much the same as the national treasure we mourn today.
It was a comic persona honed in the halls, not merely learning about his 'craft' but learning how to strike a rapport with the audience, finding out not what should make them laugh but what actually does.
'How strikingly different from our own contemporary comedians. By and large, they offer not a comic persona but the slightest exaggeration of their own personalities (which really aren't all that fascinating). Instead of jokes, they offer 'observations', 'satire' and - some upfront and some more obliquely - 'politics'. Stand-ups like to believe that they are somehow telling truth to power, exploring the tensions running underneath society.
In some ways it's a noble aim - taking part in social/cultural conversations is a lot more important than donning a red nose for an 'easy' laugh; it is much more laudable to 'challenge' your audience than 'conform' to some vague, middle-of-the-road desire not to cause 'offence'.
But alas how rarely does the theory get off the drawing board. In reality, we have a lot of interchangeable comedians largely 'observing' other comedians 'observations' and drawing on the well of buzzwords to an audience which is - in age, dress, attitude - more or less exactly like the performer onstage.
Dodd the man, self-taught but verging on genius, was an authority on the philosophy of humour, being an expert on Henri Bergson, Schopenhauer and Freud. Dodd the man as a self-employed businessman had his very unfunny run-in with the taxman, famously winning against Hector in a case shamefully brought against him when his brand of comedy was at its lowest ebb and when he was discovered to have hoarded his cash like a child over decades in suitcases all around his house.
Poverty can make you like that.
No, it's not the personality of the man that counts, it's that of the comedian - the clown suit, the fragile self-confidence, the touching lyrics of his songs of sentiment, the odd chap with the tickling stick and buck teeth. His persuasive, harmless, equality of comment was what made even the oldest and most familiar joke funny. His wasn't the comedy of the demented preacher - dividing people into sheep and goats, the saved and the damned. The comedy of malice by its very nature does not affirm life. Rather by its very bitterness it sours life.
It's easy to sneer at comedians of the Dodd stripe, to label their humour as 'safe', 'comforting' or 'unthreatening'. But it is what we wish it to be and it does what we wish it to do - remind us that we are, in our ridiculousness, in our self-importance, our bald-spot, crow's-feet, 'I beg your pardon, missus' vanities, part of the same great wave of humanity.
Today, as that ludicrous face adorns newspaper pages again, let's take the opportunity to remind ourselves that his was a rather noble mission.'
Noble indeed. And now Doddy has taken his tickling stick through the Golden Gates. Lowbrow, he has been called, but there was indeed something noble about his approach and his humour, about his affirmation of life and community and a sense of belonging.
It's a view confirmed by Pauline Hadaway
“He had one ambition in life and he achieved it: to make people laugh.
Flags on official buildings flew at half-mast in Liverpool this week as a mark of respect for one of ‘the city’s greatest sons’: the legendary Ken Dodd.
Ken Dodd is the last of the music hall maestros.
Learning his trade in the hard school of Britain’s variety circuit, Doddy became a household name in the 1960s and 1970s. Although most famous for his achievements as a comedian – he sold out an unprecedented 42 weeks at the London Palladium in 1965 – the Squire of Knotty Ash was then one of Britain’s top-selling chart acts, too. He famously kept The Beatles off the No.1 spot with his single ‘Tears’. His tattyfilarious catchphrases – ‘Have you ever been tickled, Missus?’ and ‘How tickled I am!’ – became part of British life and culture, along with his imaginary world of Diddy Men, jam-butty mines and black-pudding plantations, broken-biscuit repair works, the gravy wells from where Knotty Ash gravy was exported all over the world in a fleet of gravy boats. Knotty Ash is a real place, I tell people, it really is. It's where Ken Dodd lived his entire life. And out of that world, Ken Dodd created another world, every bit as real.
Knotty Ash
Ken Dodd created a world of his own. But it was a world that millions recognized as their own. It must have possessed some kind of reality. Jam-butty mines and black-pudding plantations populated by beings called 'Diddymen' with names like Mick the Marmalizer and Dickie Mint. 'You'll be telling me next that Knotty Ash is a real place.' It is! And I have a feeling that there was something real about that surreal world that Doddy conjured up for our amusement. He was real, grounded in love of real place and people.
"Knotty Ash is my home - it's the centre of my life and always has been. My family are still here with me in memories. I had the most wonderful family - fabulous mother and father, and wonderful brother and sister."
The Bishop of Liverpool Paul Bayes said: “Like everyone in Liverpool and like many across the world I am deeply saddened by Sir Ken’s death. His gentleness and his sustained commitment to the joy and delight of others will even outlive his jokes.
“His dedication to our city and in particular to the Knotty Ash community was never diluted by his enormous success.
“Sir Ken was a man with a quiet, deep faith, who was often seen at our Cathedral, where he loved quiet and peaceful worship. He brought joy and delight to millions, and although so many of us are in grief and sorrow here, I’m sure that there will now be a fresh gale of laughter in heaven.”
The happiness and laughter began in the house in Knotty Ash which was Doddy’s home for all his life.
“I had the happiest childhood anyone could possibly have, and I think that really is the basis of being an entertainer. If you have a happy childhood, then you want to pass that happiness onto everyone else.”
It was Ken’s beloved dad, Arthur, who inspired his love of the absurd – especially absurd names, which he later included in his act. For example, the imaginary medic Dr Chuckabutty went on to become Rufus Chuckabutty of Knotty Ash University, while Ken, in his early days, billed himself as Professor Yaffle Chuckabutty, Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter.
Ken explained: “If one of us had tonsilitis or chicken pox, my dad would say as a joke: ‘Oh we’ll have to get Dr Chuckabutty to see you.’ The name stuck in my memory.”
And it was his dad who helped nurture a love and appreciation of showbusiness: “He used to take us to all the variety theatres – the Shakespeare, the Royal Court, the Pavilion, the Empire, and sometimes to places further afield like Bootle – anywhere where there was a show on.
Sir Ken Dodd: Tickling sticks and tears for Doddy
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43373798
It was tears amid the tickling sticks as Liverpudlians trooped to the lifelong home of Sir Ken Dodd in Knotty Ash, the city suburb which he turned into a comic creation.
Flowers and tickling sticks were laid outside the simple house and many people were saying the same thing: "He always had time for you and he never left us."
"I am sad. He put on such a show when he left hospital. He always said he would die on stage."
Reverend Julia Jesson, the vicar of the local St John's church - a tickling stick's throw away from Sir Ken's house - said when she moved to the post just under a year ago, her former parishioners were very amused when they found who one of her flock would be.
"When I announced I was going to Knotty Ash the whole church burst out laughing," she said.
"Everyone knew about Knotty Ash thanks to Ken. People are proud that he never left the area.
"Ken had been a choirboy at this church and his wife Anne plays the organ here."
Cheryl Taylor, 54, left tulips and a rose outside the house and said: "The rose is off my mum, she's 90 this year, so she's grown up with him.
"He put Knotty Ash on the map, just a real nice guy."
But as people started to recall the laughter Sir Ken brought to their lives and said their own "Tatty bye" to Doddy, one floral tribute summed up the community's reaction.
"To one in a million - a true comedy legend. Loved by all."
He was of this part of the world.
'Despite the well-earned awards and acclaim – Doddy stood on the shoulders of Lancashire comedy giants like Stan Laurel, Robb Wilton and George Formby – Liverpool’s flags weren’t lowered in memory of past glories; rather, they were lowered to salute a man with a simple genius for making people laugh.
People would ask, was he any good? Good? He was brilliant. Trouble was, you could never remember any of the jokes – although in the years that followed I did get to know and love them like old friends.
It didn’t matter that Doddy’s gags were as old as the hills or that his flights of fancy conjured up a bygone era of tin baths, outside toilets and horse-drawn carts delivering coal. They were only ever means to an end. Doddy was not in the business of contriving humour, but of unleashing the sheer power of happiness. It was Doddy’s devotion to his trade of making laughter that kept me and countless others enthralled. It was his ambition, he said, to ‘slave over a hot audience’ in every live theatre in the land. Asked for his favourite town, he replied, ‘The one I’m playing tomorrow night’. From Sunderland to Stockport, Warrington, Whitley Bay, Wolverhampton, Sheffield, Stoke and back to Liverpool, he loved them all, and we loved him back. Tatty-bye, Ken, and let’s raise a glass to absent friends.' (Pauline Hadaway, writer and co-founder of the Liverpool Salon.)
I'd just qualify this view that many repeat that Ken Dodd saw his vocation as that of 'making' people laugh. He spoke instead of 'giving' people a laugh, on the basis of the innate gift of laughter. His act was about releasing and sharing laughter. Pauline understands this, writing that “Doddy was not in the business of contriving humour, but of unleashing the sheer power of happiness.” Precisely. That returns to Gail Walker's point above that Ken Dodd was concerned to find out not what “should” make people laugh but what actually has them laughing. And to those who say that that invites playing to existing prejudices, underline that there was no malice, no picking on targets, no division in Ken Dodd's humour, it was entirely inclusive, hence the way it united generations in its familiarity.
As Doddy expressed the point:
“Try to give them a laugh. I always say you can't make anybody laugh, but you can give people a laugh. Laughter is inside everybody, everybody has this laughter inside them, and it's just waiting for you to release it.”
“Laughter is the most beautiful sound in the world.”
Doddy was remarkable, someone who was truly selfless with his gift. In the Face-to-Face interview he says that he would try to "give" people a laugh. "I always say you can't make anybody laugh, but you can give people a laugh. Laughter is inside everybody, everybody has this laughter inside them, and it's just waiting for you to release it.” Hence he always said that a performance was a union between himself and the audience. What he gave us, endlessly, is the realization that we are all born with the gift of laughter, if only it could be released as often as Doddy released it.
Comedy colossus from a vanishing age: No one was funnier than Doddy, writes ROGER LEWIS, who pays tribute to his community singalongs, funny faces...
Roger Lewis captures something of the communal commitment of Doddy's humour, but also something of the pathos:
'Altogether, seeing Ken Dodd live was to rediscover post-war music hall England where the strongest oath was ‘By Jove!’
His rainbow make-up was unabashedly for the sulphur flare of 19th-century footlights, the rouge, the mascara and the purple lips.
'For all that he always went on and on about ‘happiness’ and a need to elicit ‘cascading cacophonies of chuckles, great gurgling guffaws’, Doddy’s waxen face registered pain and bewilderment better than positivity.
Indeed, when he pulled a funny face, making a meal of his jutting fangs, zany hair and staring eyes, he was a scary gargoyle, like a creature who’d fallen off a cathedral.'
'Entertainer George Melly, who once witnessed Doddy singing Sonny Boy to a ventriloquist’s doll famously named Dickie Mint, was similarly disconcerted, and thought Doddy was something of a ventriloquist’s doll himself: ‘You get him out of the box, push him on stage and he’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant’ — but not exactly recognisably human.
This is because Doddy was much more than a comedian. What he was doing was Performance Art.'
'I was transfixed as the jokes fell like leaves, one after the other — ‘Love is like a set of bagpipes. You don’t know what to do with your hands’; ‘I wanted to take my dog to obedience class, but he wouldn’t go’ — and the audience laughter ebbed and flowed in great gusts.
That these were terrible jokes was paradoxically part of the fun, like Tommy Cooper’s magic tricks going wrong. Though bouncy and eccentric, trying hard to incite laughter as a reflex, Doddy in his delivery had a dryness as well as considerable nuance.'
A vanishing comedy that belongs in a vanishing age?
Roger Lewis points out that Ken Dodd's act was 'defiantly anachronistic,' referencing things that were archaic — stockings, vests, long-johns, tin baths, girdles, soot, defunct TV programmes — as though he was 'unaware' that they were defunct. 'There were prolonged community singalongs, as if we were cheering ourselves up in an air raid shelter or hiding from the Boers.' The odd thing is, the audience too – and he played to packed theatres – was similarly unaware. That said, I remember soot and tin-baths, I still have a milkman, and I know what a community singalong is. And my dad still has long-johns, and still gets all nervous about putting them out to hang on the washing line. But maybe I'm archaic too.
“It will be a funny old world without Ken Dodd
“How I wish I had been to see Ken Dodd before he died. He was a historical monument to a Britain of backyards, milkmen, brown ale, teatime biscuits, rent collectors, town clerks, vicars and mothers-in-law, all now endangered species. When everyone who remembers these things has gone, his humour will become a mystery, like a Cro-Magnon cave painting.”
Peter Hitchens
There will be a world without Ken Dodd, but it won't be half as funny without the things which Ken Dodd's humour referenced. So maybe we were all part of a mystery play all along. Already I am reading people who feel it necessary to point out that they never found Ken Dodd funny or even amusing, thought his jokes weak, his act puerile, and his singing 'iffy.' He's a mystery to such people already. But he'll survive their incomprehension. For the reason that his humour is not actually attached to its determinations in time and place, however that may seem to be the case. His act and material, in those terms, was archaic from the first. And that never stopped him being popular. Ken Dodd was one of the last of the old variety or music hall entertainers. He became the best of a dying tradition. And he drew the crowds from first to last with this act. Why? There are many reasons. The simplest reason is that he was just funny. In fact, he was very funny indeed.
Doddy was unique, a one-off, who seemed to create his own persona and his own world.
'Dodd (whose career began in the guise of Professor Yaffle Chucklebutty, Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter) created his own lexicon and imaginative landscape, peopled by diddymen wielding tattifilarious tickle sticks, by chuckle muscles, jam-butty mines and titters-per-minute. You could call it a surrealist cosmology to rival Lewis Carroll or Spike Milligan. It marked Dodd out from his peers, increasingly so as the music-hall era gave way to the punk stylings of alternative comedy.
Dodd seemed to stand apart from contemporaries such as Kenneth Williams, Ronnie Barker and Frankie Howerd. He didn’t appear in the Carry On films, had little in common with the Goons, and was nowhere to be seen on ITV’s quick-fire standup show The Comedians. He’s not easily identifiable as a deliberately duff magician (like Tommy Cooper) or a slick gag man (Bob Monkhouse). He was as lowbrow as they come, but also the intellectuals’ comedian. He acted in Shakespeare, and the playwright and Dodd fan John Osborne once led a delegation of Royal Court theatre types to see him perform.'
This is something that interests me. I have come across people who are 'sceptical,' and even downright dismissive of Ken Dodd. They consider Ken to be childish, puerile, vulgar, crude, stupid etc. He was 'as lowbrow as they come' but … was appreciated by the highbrow too. I don't know if I would be classed as lowbrow or highbrow. I studied philosophy at PhD level. I can see what Doddy's about, and can see the art of simplicity. I remember what Marx wrote of the Paris Commune: 'like all great things, it was simple.' Ken Dodd was certainly one of those 'great things,' and he was certainly a great communalist, appealing to one and all As ever, it is the patronizing middlebrow, those in-between, who struggle to 'get it.' They lack what it takes to be highbrow, so turn and sneer at the lowbrow – the 'ordinary' folk – in order to demonstrate their taste and cleverness. It cuts no ice with me, and I've wasted no time in responding to their familiar detractions. Rousseau defined ethics as 'the sublime science of simple souls.' That sums up Ken Dodd's humour to me. The simple souls got it.
“I tell people I have the best job in the world because I only see happy people, I only see them laughing, and it’s a wonderful feeling,” Ken Dodd once said. It's that simple, and that difficult. Others can debate it between themselves, if they have time to waste. The truth is that, for all of the hyperactive juvenilia of his material, Ken Dodd was taken seriously by high-brow theatrical critics. “A Ken Dodd show is an experience of ecstatic liberation in the theatre” ran one review.
The gags and one-liners may well have been 'daft,' the act may have been 'childish,' and Doddy may have been like an overgrown schoolboy, but there was a wealth of thought, talent, work and experience that went into the Ken Dodd phenomenon. It was an art form, a throw-back to older comedic forms, yet a new and entirely unique self-creation. The mechanics, style and personal fused to produce that strange entity that was … Ken Dodd. A one-off.
'From Knotty Ash in Liverpool, Dodd came up through the unforgiving Working Men’s Club circuit. With his protruding teeth, unruly hair and his ever-present “tickling stick”, his act owed much to the techniques of Commedia dell’arte.
He combined a gentle surrealism reminiscent of The Goons with a world-beating jokes-per-minute ratio. Such was his gag rate that he entered the Guinness Book of Records in the 1960s for the longest joke-telling session: delivering 1,500 jokes in three and a half hours in one show: 7.14 jokes per minute - for over three hours!!
Over his 70-year career, he blithely ignored new trends and patterns in stand-up – the rise of Billy Connolly and first-person narrative comedy and the advent of “alternative comedy” were all alien to a man who judged his success not by the strength or by the confessional nature of his material but the duration and frequency of audience laughter.
His work rate was phenomenal – an average of 175 four- or five-hour gigs per year. While a lot of today’s big comedic names struggle when they go over the one-hour mark, Dodd would typically come on stage at 8pm and not leave until close to 1am.
There were no politics, no targets, no polemics in his sets. Everything was joke-orientated, and it didn’t matter how puerile or derivative the material was. Such was his dedication to his craft he carried around with him everywhere he went folders of notes on which he had noted what jokes had worked best in terms of audience response and what jokes needed refining.
His greatest gift though was his realization that you can’t perform a comedy show at an audience, you can only perform it with them. Which is why his act never really transferred to television – a Ken Dodd show was aimed at the front, middle and back rows – not for an abstract television audience.
He left his audiences with little choice rather than to capitulate to laughter. He was relentless in his professionalism. His shows were a battle to the death – and over five hours there was only ever going to be one winner.'
Just surrender, it's easier that way, and a whole lot jollier.
As for the jokes …
Jokes
I have kleptomania. When it gets bad I take something for it
I just read a book about Stockholm Syndrome. It started off badly but by the end I really liked it
“What a beautiful day for wearing a kilt and standing upside down in the middle of the road saying, ‘How’s that for a lampshade?’”
‘This woman wanted sleeping pills for her husband. “Why?” said the doctor, “what’s the matter with him?”. “He’s woken up”.
“What a beautiful day for shoving a brush stave up Nigel Mansell’s trousers and saying ‘how’s this for pole position’?
What a wonderful day for sticking a cucumber through your neighbour’s letter box and shouting ‘the aliens have landed!’
What a beautiful day, what a beautiful day for sticking a 20,000 electric cable up Andre Previn's trouser leg and saying: "How's that for a lightening conductor!"
How many men does it take to change a toilet roll? Nobody knows — it’s never been done before.
[Addressing people in The Gods at a provincial theatre] It’s a privilege to be asked to play here tonight on what is a very special anniversary. It is 100 years to the night since that balcony collapsed.
Doctor, ‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m approaching 50.’ ‘From which direction?’
The question I am frequently asked is how can I make a small tin of rice pudding last longer? Well, use a smaller spoon.
In some parts of the world people eat little bent pieces of wire for breakfast — it’s their staple diet.
What is deja vu? Haven’t I already answered that?
Merseyside
Awarded the OBE in 1982, the Freedom of the City of Liverpool in 2001 and knighted in 2016, Ken Dodd was named Greatest Merseysider of All Time in 2003. This he declared to be his most cherished accolade: “It was voted for by my fellow citizens in a city that has always been, and always will be, my home. I am filled with happiness. I shall raise several glasses of tickle tonic to the greatest place in the world.”
And in 2014, when he was celebrating 60 years in show business, he reflected on his many awards and accolades and said: “I treasure them all – and to be appreciated by your neighbours is probably the greatest gift of all.”
For his 90th birthday, Doddy was treated to an afternoon tea of jam butties and Diddy pies at Liverpool Town Hall. And he had a special message for the countless ECHO readers wishing him well. He said: “This is a day of thanksgiving. Thank you, ECHO readers, for all the love, affection and support – and advice, sometimes – you have given me.”
He explained that it is the fans who come to his shows that have kept him going:
“It’s the audiences, you live off an audience. I tell people I’ve got the best job in the world, because I only see happy people. I only see them laughing and it’s a wonderful feeling, it comes over to you on the stage when you have an audience laughing their socks off.
“I won’t hang my tickling stick up until I have to.”
“In life, we all try to do the right things. Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don’t get it quite right. But I’d like to think I’ve done some good.”
And he added: “The most wasted of all days is the day during which we have not laughed. Or, as W.C. Fields said: ‘Smile every morning – get it over with.’”
Ken’s life, like all lives, was touched by tears, but it was defined by his two favourite words: happiness and laughter. He once said: “My favourite sound is laughter. It’s a beautiful sound; well worth working for. I’m proud to be a member of the laughter-making profession. I equate laughter with good music – it pleases me as much as Handel’s Messiah.”
Ken Dodd was a one off. The fact that he was always on television, radio, always working the theatres, made him familiar, and minimized just how .. different he really was. He wasn't quite like the rest of us. But he was familiar, unthreatening, inviting and appealing. He was a crowd-pleaser. I hear the same story over and again of people sending him letters and cards, and receiving a personal reply back. Everything I hear people say about him, his work in the local community, his support for various charities, confirms the view that he was a genuine and sincere man, the people's comedian. He had time for everyone. He had such a great positive outlook on the world, his comedy was joyous and life-affirming, and he saw himself as someone who released the capacity for laughter present in each and all, bringing and spreading joy and happiness among people. There's a lesson in life there. His audiences were all folk, people as they are, without implication, all ages. Just people, with all the hopes and fears and troubles and trials of people. I remember the interview with Ken Dodd and The Beatles in 1963, when Ken suggested he become the fifth Beatle. He solicited suggestions for an 'earthy' name for himself. Lennon, McCartney had a go before George offered an emphatic 'Sod!' 'Sod Dodd.' Much laughter followed. And it was very funny indeed. In Liverpool, George is what they call a 'dry sod.' But I take Ken Dodd and his humour to be earthy indeed. He took the hopes and fears of people and earthed them, like a good priest. Simple it may be (try to do it, though, with all it takes in terms of mastering a vast material, delivery, timing, rhythm). But it's a pity more people don’t adopt the same affirmative approach. The world would be a much better place if we did. But there it is, politics and divisions and separations that stand in the way of our universal humanity. I'd like to think we could follow his example and just be kinder to each other. And find the laughter within. The chuckle muscle. We all have one. Use it or lose it.
I have sent a sympathy card to Lady Anne Dodd. That title raises a smile. Many will remember Anne selling Ken's programmes front of house at theatres up and down the country. Sir Ken and Lady Anne! Without airs or graces.
I have this story from Jan Rawlings:
“I must share this story with you. At last years' show in Torquay, one man in the front row kept heckling Ken, not just the odd comment, it was all the way through. Members of the audience were getting fed up with it and after a while started shouting out ‘shut up’ amongst other things! Ken however didn’t let it bother him but shortly before the end of the show wandered across the stage to where the man was seated and said ‘well sir, it’s been a pleasure doing this double act with you’. The audience roared with laughter and clapped and cheered. Ken then wound up the show, singing ‘My Thanks to You’ and ‘Absent Friends,’ beautiful songs that touched my heart.
Then, you wouldn’t believe it, but the man who had been heckling him stood up again and started shouting something out! This time, Ken pointed to him and said ‘please sit down sir’ quite sternly - but the guy kept on talking and went on to pay a lovely tribute to Ken, thanking him on behalf of the audience for all the laughter and happiness over the years. This prompted a standing ovation from the rest of the audience and they were clapping and cheering for ages. Throughout all this Ken just stood on stage smiling and shaking his head slowly from side to side and when the noise died down he replied very quietly (almost in a whisper) ‘but it’s what I love to do.' Modest and humble as always. You could really feel the love for Ken in the Princess Theatre that night. There will never be another Doddy. We consider ourselves to have been very lucky to have lived in his times as you really had to see him live to fully appreciate what a master of his art he was and sadly now that will no longer be possible.”
Live in the theatre, he was like a barrel of laughter cascading downhill, or uphill really, like a firework display. Very rarely in life do you have that "swept away" feeling. That's what Doddy live in the theatre was like. He was remarkable. I've never seen anything like it, not sustained over so long a period of performance. At times, I had to stop and catch my breath.
"But it’s what I love to do." I loved to see and hear him. Ken Dodd was a very modest man, generous in sharing his great gift with us all. So I'll say it for him: he was the very best at what he loved to do, bringing joy, laughter and happiness to the world. The world needs more Ken Dodds. But there was only the one, and could only have been the one. We were truly blessed.
Court appearance
In the 1980s, his television profile started to fade after thirty five years in showbusiness; there were fewer summer shows and pantos, and many more one-night stands (“One night is all they can stand”). A cloud crossed over at the end of the decade when he faced charges of cheating the Inland Revenue and of false accounting. He was acquitted after a five-week trial, but the humiliation in his home city, where his grandmother had been Liverpool’s first female magistrate, was hard to bear.
Ken told the court: "Since I am stripped naked in this court, I might as well tell you the lot." And 'the lot' revealed a remarkably eccentric man in a world of his own, a world that he shared with us all in his shows. He was a 'live' comedian, he lived that persona. There was an unreality about him as a person as distinct from his identity as a comedian. He explained: "I am not mean, but I am nervous of money, nervous of having it, nervous of not having it," and described money as a yardstick of success - "important only because I have nothing else".
His counsel described him as a fantasist stamped with lifelong eccentricities - such as keeping love letters in a safety deposit box and hoarding £336,000 in the attic - due to a close-knit family upbringing.
Sir Ken told accountants that he lived on annual expenses of just £3,500, had not bought a new suit for two or three years and never had a holiday until he was 51.
The image of a man who had never made a psychological separation from his parents in order to become an adult, and one who was innately stingy and kept his money in shoe-boxes under the bed (“I like to collect pictures of the Queen”) as well as in offshore accounts, was initially tragic; but after paying his defence counsel, George Carman, £1m, and approximately the same amount to the Revenue, he bounced back with a stash of new material: “Income tax was invented 200 years ago, at two pence in the pound. My trouble was I thought it still was.”
'The most touching part of his act was always the expert and hilarious duet with his vent doll Dicky Mint, the Diddyman who was perhaps the little “sonny boy” he never had in real life. And if his signature tune was Happiness, he would always leave you with a lament in Absent Friends for loved ones and the departed music hall stars in whose wake he so gloriously trailed. He really was the last in the line, and acknowledged by his peers as one of the greatest ever.
He was a deeply private man, which is why the two court cases hurt him so much. There was no luxury lifestyle, and he usually drove home in the small hours after each show, wherever he was in the country, to save on hotel bills.'
The revelations in the court case cut Doddy down to size, stripped his eccentric existence naked, and yet served to magnify the scale of his comic persona. As Ken Dodd comedian, this very simple and humble man was a giant.
He came back. In 2001, he was given the Freedom of the City of Liverpool. He was then voted the greatest Merseysider in a poll on local radio and in the Liverpool Echo (Lennon and McCartney were runners-up) and in 2009 his statue, complete with tickling stick – and that of the battling Labour MP Bessie Braddock – were cast in bronze on Lime Street station.
Dodd was restored on television, to some extent, by two "Audience with …" programmes in 1994 and 2001, in which he refracted some of his act through a Q & A with a crowd of celebrities; they are wonderfully poignant, revealing programmes, and are often repeated. In 1971 he had been an admired Malvolio in Twelfth Night at the Liverpool Playhouse, – and he returned to Shakespeare as Yorick the jester in Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film of Hamlet; Yorick is a only a skull in the play, but we see this peerless clown in full (though silent) stream with his “flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar”.
Ken Dodd came to the Theatre Royal in my own home town of St Helens many times. I can only repeat that you had to see the man live to truly appreciate the man's genius. He was like a firework display, with lots of greater and lesser explosions going off, a cascade of merriment, a packed audience roaring as one in laughter, the sound of laughter echoing round and round. You'd laugh because the jokes were funny, because Doddy thought they were even funnier, and because the audiences rolling with laughter around you convinced you they were funnier still. He had you so you wanted to laugh. And he wanted you to laugh. So laugh you would. His merriment and mayhem was infectious. You'd laugh because others were laughing. People love to laugh. Ken Dodd was the funniest man I ever saw, and by a distance. He'll be greatly missed, but fondly remembered forever, at the Theatre Royal St Helens.
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There was no anger or rancour or cynicism or nastiness or division in his comedy, it was about fun and laughter and joy, forming a union of light-hearts. He had universal appeal. He was one who just wanted people of all kinds to laugh. Some dismiss it as 'safe'. It was inoffensive, certainly. And I maintain that his was a noble vision, a unifying mission, a confirmation and celebration of our shared humanity. He was a crowd pleaser who brought pleasure to millions. The world needs more Ken Dodds. But there was, and could only ever have been, the one Ken Dodd, Professor Yaffle Chuckabutty. Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter. And he'll never be forgotten, so long as people remain on nodding terms with the joy in their hearts, the laughter in the eyes, and that little sad sentimentality in their souls ... and continue to love jokes about three-legged chickens.
And what a beautiful singer of songs he was. Think of Me and The River are my personal favourites, but I love the soft and gentle version of Try to Remember. We'll remember Doddy, and we won't have to try.
He gave so much. He was the most selfless of entertainers, a man who lived to bring, give and spread happiness. In the Face-to-Face interview he said that he would try to "give" people a laugh. "I always say you can't make anybody laugh," he said, "but you can give people a laugh. Laughter is inside everybody, everybody has this laughter inside them, and it's just waiting for you to release it.” Hence he always said that a performance was a union between himself and the audience. What he gave us, endlessly, is the realisation that we are all born with the gift of laughter, if only it could be released as often as Doddy released it.
He was a student of comedy, of human behaviour. He was a highly intelligent and incredibly well-read man who thought deeply on this. It shows. His sustained brilliance over so many decades, the universal appeal he achieved, show it. He clearly absorbed Freud, the way that smiles and laughter are a release from anxiety, the reassurance that the appearance/reappearance the mother has for the baby, bringing/giving joy. He was a comic genius of the very highest order. The very highest. The man knew all about the mechanics of humour, but his genius lay in never letting that show, the warmth, the silver thread connecting him with the heart of the audience, the sheer joy was always uppermost. People got it, immediately and directly, they saw the gift, Ken's and their own and the silver thread connecting them. He saw himself as building bridges. He was truly remarkable.
His shows could appear to be fired by a machine gun of ad libs when in fact they were well structured and paced and thoroughly rehearsed. The TV shows could never quite capture his talent (the radio shows were better in this respect). He was too big, too multi-faceted for television.
Many can struggle to understand why Doddy won the award of greatest ever Merseysider over Lennon and McCartney. I love The Beatles as much as anyone, but it makes complete sense to me. Doddy was in the heart and soul of the people, particularly his own community. I show people the TV clips, and they do indeed respond to things like the three-legged chicken joke. They are "getting it" slowly, but not quite. You had to see Ken Dodd perform live to have that 'swept away' experience. Sir Ian McKellen's tribute is interesting on this, where he says that he never found Doddy funny on radio or TV (although clearly the audiences of those shows did), but that you had to see him "where he belonged, live, in a theatre" to truly appreciate his greatness. It was like a firework display, a cascade, a barrel of laughs rolling down a waterfall, the greater laughs causing lesser, the lesser growing into the greater on a roll. McKellen says he started to laugh, "not because the jokes were funny but because Doddy thought they were" and because he convinced you they were, and because he wanted you to find them funny. "His very presence and appearance tickled like a tickle stick and I gave in." I'd say Ken's jokes were funny, too, very funny indeed. And so many of them in one show. It was all incredibly well-thought out, the persona, the routine, the shows, the man had an incredible work ethic, put so much thought and reflection into his act. On the TV you only get a snapshot of how incredibly funny the man was live in the flesh. TV was too small for his multi-levelled talent, it confined and constrained his many-sided genius. So I would emphasize this "live" experience of Doddy to the skeptics. They'll see his genius and his noble aim, his universal appeal by the time I've finished. And they'll see why people voted him the tops on Merseyside. I've been arguing with a few British critics who are reducing his act to the jokes, analyzing them, bracketing the TV performances with "old-fashioned" and "safe" entertainment which - they say - has been eclipsed by modern edgier comedy (er, no, not in my humble opinion) and saying they never found him funny. I am sure they didn't find him funny at all. And I say they are over-analyzing in abstraction from the performance. They are seeing only the mechanics, and missing the entire point of comedy. I don't doubt for a second that if these critics were to tell the same jokes and one-liners, then they would raise barely a titter and find no audience at all. I know for sure that, in their hands, I wouldn't find the material funny at all. Because they've missed the important bit - it takes the genius of Doddy to get rows and rows of people laughing until tears rolled down their faces. It takes a comedian, one who is more than the material. That's the difference. Doddy was a funny man and great entertainer, on radio and TV. Live in the theatre, he was ... something else. Doddy's streets ahead of such critics. I can't think of any individual comedian who is anywhere near him.
Doddy had so many layers and facets to his talent, and such great depth. That quality is entirely missed by his critics who, mocking his act as "lowbrow" are really only mocking the audiences who loved him so much - those audiences are blessed with the warmth and intelligence to "get" precisely what Doddy was about. He truly loved and appreciated his fans, just 'ordinary' folk who clearly meant the world to him, as he did to us. His genius was that he presented his immense talent in accessible form so that everyone could receive it, the only requirement being a light-heart and a capacity for joy, without implication. He was outside of cynicism and point-scoring, he was for the people, and the people loved him, in their millions. I think of how many of our 'absent friends' are not with us today to lend their voices to their tributes. I have various family members of all descriptions and designations, many no longer with us. I can still see their faces now, lit up with joy, tears rolling down their cheeks. I'll be eternally thankful to Doddy for all of this. He didn't tell a joke, he sang a joke. And he made the heart sing with joy to be alive. The man understood the music of life. He told Dawn French in interview: “A joke is like a beautiful watch: take the back off it and there’s balance, rhythm and timing. You mustn’t have one word too many or too few.”
And he gave us the sadness, too, in his songs. He was unafraid to be what he was, and touch the human roots of comedy and life, whatever prevailing fashions said. And to those who keep telling me that his humour was 'safe,' I'll keep saying he was a crowd-pleaser, a unifier, a man of the people, and that his was a noble vision. And I'd say that remain true to all that is good and joyous and life-affirming, Doddy was actually far more challenging to the times we live in than those who have gone down another 'edgier' route. I'd say he did the more difficult thing in sticking to what was healthy and unifying; and I'd say it was the right way in the end. There's no-one to touch Doddy, none that come close. There's joy in having shared our time with him, and sadness that we'll never see him or his like again. It's not possible. He was a one-off. The best of his kind, and his kind was the best.
The man was a genius. He was a professor of comedy who thought deeply about his vocation, a marvellous singer and master of ventriloquism. You don't stay at the top for sixty years unless you are good. But the critical acclamation is somewhat beside the point (although I am sure Doddy would have appreciated being appreciated, as a student of the art). He was the people’s comedian and his only thought was to entertain the public. I was lucky enough to see him in the flesh and see how it worked. He could reduce people to tears, tears of joy. I'd describe it as an ecstatic experience, were it not for the aching sides. He could find the chuckle muscles and get them laughing. He could have them aching in time. He had a singing and acting career, TV shows, excelled at all of it, but his first love was to be in a theatre in front of the public, reaching out to them, bringing so much happiness. There'll never be another Doddy; there could never be another, it's impossible. God bless you Doddy, the master of mirth and the King of Mirthyside, always. We'll never forget Doddy, he's in our hearts, he always was and he always will be.
Asked what he would like his epitaph to be, Ken Dodd answered with typical modesty: “He made us laugh. He gave us a laugh. He did his best.” That's a claim that I could make for myself. Most people 'do their best,' I'd say, and give others the odd laugh on the way. There's no doubting that Ken Dodd 'did his best.' He had an immense talent and an incredible drive allied to an incredible work ethic. In doing his best on these terms, Ken Dodd became the best. I think so, and I'm not alone in that view. Roy Hudd has paid Ken Dodd the tribute of being 'the best stand-up I ever saw.'
'The best stand-up I ever saw': Roy Hudd praises the late Ken Dodd - Daily Mail
'We all worshipped him. The public too. He was an amazing man. He was the last performer who became top of the bill and packed theatres wherever he went, all over the country, without television. Certainly he was the best stand-up comedian I ever saw, but he was much more than that was Ken. He knew how to play audiences, he was always inventing stuff. He did very topical jokes, he did lovely songs. And also he found a great idea to entertain the kids, the Diddymen. And for all the rest of us he did great topical jokes. He was a powerhouse when he got on the stage. His attack, everything about the man, his stamina, all those things. And he got better as he got older. He was really the greatest role model for anyone coming into the business as a comedian. He spent his life getting it right.'
Ken Dodd 'got it right.' He would be constantly analyzing and reflecting on his act in order to get it right, right down to the smallest details. He missed nothing. Of course, he made it look as though he was a natural. He was never short of a word. But to make it look so effortless took an immense amount of work and thought. Making a joke, a routine or a performance look easy is not, of course, the same as any of those things actually being easy. That's the art, the craft, the hard work, the discipline, the skill, the honing of the talent. That's why Ken Dodd was 'much more' than a comedian. As he himself said:
“You see, when you're a comic, yes, OK, you start off by telling jokes. But throughout your career you have to be many other things as well. If you want to be a successful entertainer and performer, you have to be a comedian, you have to be an orator, you have to be an actor, you have to be a poet, you have to be a creative writer, you have to be an impressionist, you have to be able to do dialects. You have to be able to do about a dozen things to make the one entertainer.”
And those who get good at it, who get it right, and get very, very good in making it look easy – those people are the ones who possess true genius. Ken Dodd was such a person. Once he began, he never seemed able to stop. And the audience couldn't stop laughing either. The man was a genius. Ken Dodd loved what he did and could never stop entertaining. He would joke about it being his job, about going back to do his job. But it was more than a job, it was his life. This was who he was, and how he lived his life. As Bob Monkhouse told viewers of his documentary series Behind the Laughter:
“I've talked about performers who really don't want to go on stage themselves, they will send a character on stage, a persona they've invented that they can project on stage – they'd rather hide behind that. Or they'll wear a disguise, a funny costume. What you can say of Ken Dodd is that his entire presentation is a bit of a disguise. So Doddy sends out a madman on the stage, a wonderful, organized, clever, spinning Dervish of a madman that he has invested with life. And he animates him and he keeps him alive as long as it gives him pleasure and the audience is laughing and he'll make them laugh longer than they ever expected. When he comes off I think he dies a little death and becomes once again the ordinary bloke that Kenneth Dodd is in real life. And he's not as exciting a person like the chap on stage, he's a quieter man – he's just as sweetly natured – but I think he's waiting to go back on. I think everything offstage is an interval.”
I remember Ken in an interview for Heroes of Comedy praising fellow Liverpudlian Arthur Askey as a 'crowd pleaser.' 'The world needs more Arthur Askeys,' said Ken. The world needs more Ken Dodds. He pleased millions over the decades. But there was only, and could only ever have been the one Ken Dodd. He was a one-off. And now he's gone. He leaves behind a legacy of laughter that was gathered over seven decades, and which will last for all time. Tatty bye, dear old Doddy, Professor Yaffle Chuckabutty. Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter.
Some videos
You can't make people laugh, you can only give people a laugh. All you do as a comic is touch the spring of laughter.
Sir Ken Dodd LAST TV HD Video & Interview Alex Belfield Blackpool
'You must be original. There can only be one of anything. There can only be one anybody. “I'm a one-off. The doctor said there's nothing I can do about it.” I wanted to be an original.'
I'll be thinking of Doddy today, still with that strange feeling of sadness and happiness since hearing of his death on my first day back in the cabin in California. World's away, but so very close. I have many happy memories of Ken Dodd. Lowbrow, puerile, dated?? Critics can say what they like. He was the most life-affirming, joyous and funniest comedian I've ever seen, blessed with a huge intelligence, social and emotional as well as intellectual. He knew people, he performed for people, all people, without anger, hatred and implication; he united rather than divided, he healed the wounds of the world. 'But it's what I love to do,' he said. He was the best at what he loved to do.
When his marathon shows finally ended, he sent people home exhausted, their sides aching from laughing for hours on end. You couldn't get him off stage. You couldn't get him to stop. And the audience, for all that they would keep looking nervously at their watches, didn't want him to stop. 'I think I can call you friends now,' he would say, four or fives hours into the show. People missed their buses home. Taxis did a roaring trade. No one cared. You got ten times and more for your money.
Now the spotlight has been finally turned off, the stage lights too, and the curtain has been brought down: The happy memories carry on, though. I can only say a humble thanks to Ken for all those happy memories. I, together with very many more, will miss Doddy very much. A lovely funny man who did his damnedest to put a smile on the faces of one and all. What a genius he was, and what a generous soul, giving us over sixty years of fun, laughter and happiness. And now Ken has taken his tickling stick through the golden gates. We'll remember Doddy, there are so many very happy memories of the man etched into our souls. I can see him now in the joy on the faces of various members of my family, going back to grandparents, aunties, my mother, and forwards to younger relatives. It is so sad to think that this man who could give so much joy and laughter will never be seen nor heard again, but there is a great thanks to be given for the immense happiness he brought to the world. A great man of happiness, joy and pure talent. Our very absent friend Ken Dodd. He will be greatly missed. God bless and Rest in Peace.
Tatty bye Doddy! Tatty bye!
Additional
The funeral of Sir Kenneth Arthur Dodd, 1pm, Liverpool Cathedral. As a mark of respect, the flags at Liverpool Town Hall, St George’s Hall, Cunard Building and Central Library will be lowered for the day.
Ken Dodd was the funniest, most life-affirming and joyous comedian I ever saw, blessed with a huge intelligence. He knew people, he performed for people, without anger, hatred and implication. 'But it's what I love to do,' he said modestly. I'll say it for him: he was the best at what he loved to do.
"Not only was he a genius, and I use the word advisedly, but he was the dearest man. He was extraordinary in that when you met him he had no ego. He was more interested in you, or in whoever he was talking to than he was in himself, which is a rarity." - Stephanie Cole
When his marathon shows finally ended, he sent people home exhausted, their sides aching from laughing for hours on end. You couldn't get him off stage. You couldn't get him to stop. And the audience, for all that they would keep looking nervously at their watches, didn't want him to stop. 'I think I can call you friends now,' he would say, four or fives hours into the show. People missed their buses home. Taxis did a roaring trade. No one cared. You got ten times and more for your money. What price happy memories?
He was a true professor of comedy. He studied Freud, Bergson, Schopenhauer. Those who see only an end of the pier comedian see nothing at all. Ken traced his approach back to the 'marvellous double act,' the 'two Harry's:' Aristotle and Aristophenes. They invented humour. Mystery plays, taverns, music halls, variety, Doddy studied it all. Humour hasn't changed , we are still laughing at exactly the same things we were laughing at thousands of years ago. But Ken cared little for middlebrow critics. He played for the people, and the people got it, with no need of explanation. He understood people and they, in turn, understood Ken's humour. Simple it may have seemed (try and do it, I say), childish even. “I don't like cruel humour,” he said. Ken explained that it is the fans who come to his shows that have kept him going: “It’s the audiences, you live off an audience. I tell people I’ve got the best job in the world, because I only see happy people. I only see them laughing and it’s a wonderful feeling, it comes over to you on the stage when you have an audience laughing their socks off.”
“The humility that Ken Dodd expressed in interviews (“I love people ... The best use of our lives is to enhance other people’s lives”) was real: the shows were a communal experience in the affirmation of life. We’re all kin, and laughing together over the same things will confirm our commonality. “I won’t hang my tickling stick up until I have to.” Only death, or the threat of being billed for overtime, could persuade him to leave the stage he so loved. And now Doddy has taken his tickling stick through the Golden Gates.
"No performer I have ever known had more time for his public. He never shortchanged them on stage. He was always available off." (John Fisher). He knew he was incomplete without his public.
I have written up John Fisher's moving eulogy from the funeral service.
'Good afternoon. How do you describe Ken Dodd to someone who never saw him perform live on stage? Words are inadequate things at times. But how about a joking, jumping, singing, skipping, verbal, visual whirlwind of laughter? A one-man carnival of comedy and colour, music and mayhem, festivity, friendliness and fun. Sadly today we live in a shallow age of instant celebrity, where we has more so-called national treasures than I would care to shake a tickling stick at. Ken put it in his own words, I don't do much television these days, I can't cook. You see national treasure, well Doddy was THE genuine article, who celebrated life in all its absurdity from the cradle to the grave, tickling the funny bones, teasing the chuckle muscles of everyone, from tiny tots to geriatric grandmas and grandpas throughout the land. I found out that for myself the first time I saw him perform, which was at the London Palladium in 1965. I never knew such laughter was possible. I first met him a year later, I was now an undergraduate. He was playing a three week season at the New Theatre in Oxford. It was also the time of Beatlemania. But let us not forget the time of Doddymania. He was the one solo performing artist capable of giving the Fabulous Four the run for their money in the charts. And every night the police were required to control the crowds outside the theatre in George Street, something unheard of for a comedian.
With the self-confidence of youth I had written to Doddy requesting an opportunity to meet. This led to an evening in his dressing room discussing the business of comedy, all the great comedians he admired. He was a little surprised that I had even heard of some of them, names like Billy Bennett, and Suzette Tarry, who gave him the idea of the tickling stick, and Gilly Potter. “You know, young man, one day you should write about all this,” he said. And a few years later, I did just that. And some of you will have the result on your shelves at home. Little did I know then, of course, that our lives would cross again so many times, from the moment Michael Parkinson shows, his own series, This is Your Life, his London Palladium Christmas Special, Heroes of Comedy, The Escapades of the Diddymen, and so much more. I last saw him perform at the Bournemouth Pavillion almost exactly a year ago. It was Easter Saturday. He was given a standing ovation after a four and a half hour show which he must have done [laughter] well he did three hours of it. I last spoke to him just a few weeks ago, just before he came out of hospital. He was still buzzing with thoughts and ideas about the great funny men and women we both worshipped. The death of Victoria Wood hit him particularly hard. As Stephanie alluded to earlier it is somehow ironic that his death should be book-ended by not one but by two other cultural icons. I refer to Sir Roger Bannister and to Stephen Hawking. You see they all had a deep interest in one subject and that was time. Hawking wrote a best-selling book on the matter, A Brief History of Time, and reached a wider audience in the process. Bannister had an almost clinical obsession with it, the merest fraction of a second was all important, and he entered the record books because of it.
As for Doddy, well he had his own particular take on the subject. “You see, young man, time is an illusion,” he used to say, as I tried to explain the difficulty of editing a sixty minute spot down to five minutes. [laughter] That said, I have never heard of him being late for a performance, and as for over-running, he brilliantly turned his miscalculation of time into a cornerstone of his act. What did he used to say? “Don't worry, you'll be safe, you'll be going home in the daylight.” [laughter]
One thing is for certain. No performer I've ever known had more time for his public. He never short-changed them on stage, he was always available for them off. I once had to walk with him the short distance from his dressing room to the green room at the BBC Television Centre. Depending on the lifts, it should have taken at most a couple of minutes. It took close to an hour, as first one person, then another, then two or three more seemed to emerge from the shadows wanting to shake his hand to thank him for the happiness he had given them. He chatted away to each in turn wanting to know about their lives, wanting to engage in sincere conversation. That was his way of repaying them. He always knew that as a comic he was incomplete without them.
Ken Dodd had an astonishing performing career, lasting over seventy years. For all but a tenth of those performing as the uncontested solo top of the bill. And in all that time, and this is quite remarkable, he never copied anyone. His comic persona appeared almost fully formed back in those early days when he was being spotted by the likes of his agents
Ken continued to polish and refine and of course to expand his act over the years. But while he didn't copy anyone he seemed to absorb within his own image so much of the best of British comedy and humour. There was the timing, panache and sparkle of Max Miller, the impishness and glee of dear Arthur Askey, the droll burlesque of Sandy Powell, the rebel instinct and sense of wonder shared by Dan Lino and Spike Milligan. Even the child-friendly inventiveness of Roald Dahl. And the vocal dexterity of our greatest ventriloquist Arthur Worseley. He was, in other words, a one-man compendium of the British music hall tradition. He was also the humblest of men. I think he did have ego, of course, because all performers need that. But he had no conceit, no concept of his own greatness. In his eyes, he was just a working pro doing what he could, the best he did.
If I take you back to Television Centre again, we were walking through reception one day when coming towards us through the big main doors were The Two Ronnies. Ken sort of melted in their presence like a tongue-tied schoolboy meeting his sporting hero. This was not mock adulation put on for comic effect, it was sincere and true. And after the joshing, the hugging and the handshakes we went on our way. And he turned to me and said: “I wish I had half the talent of either one of them. They know what comedy is really about.” They were brilliant. But little did he realize that he had double the talent of the two of them put together.
I have had the honour of working with many comedy legends. True giants like the king of slapstick, dear Sir Norman Wisdom, Tommy Cooper of course, Askey, Dawson, Morecombe, Wise. I know that if they were here with us today, and who is to say they aren't, they would all agree with my assessment that Ken Dodd will be remembered as one of the three greatest performers produced by the British variety stage. There was Max Miller. He was a comedian who sang songs. There was Gracie Fields. She was a singer with a flair for comedy. Then there was Ken Dodd, who came along later and literally combined the best of them.
When Doddy was the special subject of the five hundredth edition of This is Your Life, Eric Sykes comparing him with the comedians of a later generation referred to him as a Chippendale in a room full of G-Plan. [laughter] To quote Sir Michael Parkinson in conversation only last week, no-one who tried to make a living persuading people to laugh and was any good at it could deny the inspiration of his example. And on Ken's 90th birthday, the drama critic Michael Billington writing in The Guardian admitted that he had been touched by genius in the theatre on only two occasions: once was watching Laurence Olivier, the other time, Ken Dodd. That this man should not have been awarded a knighthood for so long was about as unjust as the idea of Churchill being denied a state funeral. They treated Chaplin you will remember in the same shabby way. They were both at the same level of excellence. But it all came right in the end, allowing Ken just time to enjoy one last lap of honour around his beloved theatres, meeting more fans and making more friends along the way.
It was the other Eric, Morecombe that is, who said that nobody could follow Doddy. Now nobody can. The lights have dimmed and the curtain has closed on his wonderful world of variety. Ken Dodd was no-contest the complete comedian, our greatest entertainer. But he was more. He was a life-enhancing force of nature. He was a fount of charity, kindness and bonhomie. And a loyal friend. It was typical of him that he never forgot our first Oxford encounter and referred to it warmly during our last conversation.
Let us rejoice then, and say thanks for his life and talent today, at the same time as we thank this magnificent city of Liverpool, not to mention his beloved Knotty Ash for providing the environment in which he thrived throughout his life. At the same time as we also thank and honour Lady Anne for the strength and support she gave him in his later years that he continued to transport audiences to a happier place, like no performer before or since. Max Miller used to say “when I'm dead and gone the game's finished.” Well it is now. We'll never see the like of Ken Dodd again. Thank you, Sir Ken, Tatty-Bye.'
I have written out the speeches made by the two Jimmys at the funeral service of Sir Ken Dodd. (There may be a few errors here and there, some names are unfamiliar, so apologies, but there are wonderful lines here that deserve to be seen in print).
Speech from Jimmy Tarbuck
'Well good afternoon Liverpool, and what a perfect venue for our city's hero and perhaps our city's greatest hero. And I'm pleased for Ken at yet another full house. But if there's a collection, I can think of one or two comedians out there who must not go near it. Three or four as a matter of fact as I look round. But you've got to imagine the scene. The escalator stops at the Gates of Heaven, and a figure steps out and St Peter says 'name?' 'Kenneth Arthur Dodd.' 'Oh,' he says, 'wait.' 'Hello Lord, he's here.' 'Who?' 'Kenneth Arthur Dodd.' He went 'Doddy! Wonderful! Ask him will he do five minutes.' [laughter] St Peter said 'No. He's never done five minutes in his life. He's not getting up here.'
How did I meet him? It was in Jacob's Club and all the Liverpool acts will know this. And they had a gala night fifty seven years ago and all the local comics got up and we got bookings from it. My favourite, Johnny Hackett, tremendous comic. Jim Coutton, did an unusual act with his dog, he had the dog, a Jack Russell, under his arm, and he sang in the dog's ear, and the dog wooooo along, and it was wonderful. So we are all in the room, rehearsal, and the door bursts open and there he is, this lunatic with the hair and all that, “Hello boys! I'll just wander on and tickle them up for you!” We all went, 'well how long will he do?' Oh he won't be long. Well... he was on and he was on and he was on. And Hackett said to him, “Ken, you're out of order, you've gone ...” “It didn't seem too long to me. How long was I on there?” He [Hackett] said: “Coutton's dog's died.” [laughter] And I just fell in love with him. I thought, how could you do that, just come in the dressing room and have the dressing room in uproar, with everyone roaring laughing. And everybody out there. And as always, they wouldn't let him off.
He sang Happiness because he gave happiness. Was he a good comic? No. He was better than that. He was the greatest stage comedian I've ever seen in my life, and especially, and Michael Grade's here, will back this, when he was at the London Palladium he just .. they hadn't seen him down in the South, and I just said 'wait till you've seen this fellow.' And he came down, ladies and gentlemen, and he just paralysed them. And I just went, I'm so proud. “Hello Flash,” he said, “it went alright didn't it?” It was an honour to watch him, it was a joy to see how he broke jokes up and down, and live on the stage he set a standard, ladies and gentlemen, which no one has remotely approached since.
And this psalm [Psalm 139] was one of the great Dodd's favourites:
O God you search me and you know me all my thoughts lie open to your gaze When I walk or lie down you are before me even the maker and keeper of my days
You know my passing and my rising you discern my purpose from afar and with love everlasting you besiege me in every moment of life and death you are
Before a word is on my tongue Lord before you know its meaning through and through you are with me beyond my understanding God of my present, my past and future too
Although your spirit is upon me until I search your shelter from light there is nowhere on earth I can escape you even the darkness is radiant in your sight
For you created me and shaped me gave me life within my mother's womb for the wonder of who I am I praise you and safe in your hands all creation is made
I just want to thank you, Ken, and in the words of Tina Turner, it's very easy, you're simply the best. By far. Thank you.'
Speech from Jimmy Cricket 'Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen, and let me just say what an honour it is to be asked to say a few words. When Ken started off in showbusiness here in his home town of Liverpool, he wanted cards printed to give out to all the agents and he went to the printer and he said “I want you to put 'Ken Dodd the comedian who is different,' and when you get to the word 'different,' I want you to write it upside down. And the printer said 'wait a minute, I can't do that! I'm a printer, people will laugh at me!' And Ken went [nods head] 'That's what I want.'
And boy was he different. He was one of the most different, original, innovative and gifted comedians we will ever see. Loved, as Jimmy says, by all his pros and his audiences. You know, we enjoyed him on the radio and the television but the live shows were special. From the minute he went on with his tickling stick he created magic.
Comedians like me, we drive five hours to do a one hour show; Ken drives one hour to do a five hour show. [laughter] It takes a special comedian to do that. But afterwards, to shake hands with everybody, it takes a special person. And that was Ken. He had time for everybody. He says we were all walking miracles, every one of us, we all have a story to tell. And when he weaved his magic with his audience, as he said himself, it was like a classical orchestra conductor giving out the greatest sound, the most beautiful sound of all, laughter.
His beloved Anne used to love him when he mentioned and did … he did this .. it was an analogy or a routine, and it was called the Rainbow of Laughter. Right at the top is the colour white, and that's what you hear when you pass a playground, a schoolyard, children, pure, honest, just laughing for the joy of living; as you come down the rainbow there was yellow, that was for clowns, visual, slapstick humour; then there was red, love, from the heart, sweetheart humour; and at the bottom there was the dark, laughter of cynicism and satire.
Ken always said his gifts, his talents, were from God. And comedians like Ken, they only come once in a lifetime. We thank God today that he came during our lifetime.
I'm going to finish on a reading from St John, the Gospel:
Jesus said to his disciples, 'do not let your hearts be troubled, believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you myself so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” And Thomas said to him, “Lord we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” [John 14: 1-6]
Thank you.'
'Sir Ken used his voice to spread God’s joy, it began in the church, singing in the choir of St John’s Knotty Ash, Liverpool.He spoke of his Christian faith in a 2007 edition of Songs of Praise, noting that he prays before each performance. He later described the Book of Common Prayer as his “guide to life”. When asked about religious jokes, he said they were off-limits: “It’s not right that people should poke fun at the Christian religion. My God has been very good to me.”Arguably God has been very good to us, appointing Sir Ken as the nation’s favourite court jester. His stage act was filled to the brim with pure unadulterated joy – no agenda, polemic or opinion, but the very essence of good, clean fun.'
'Joy-filled atmosphere. In common with other famous comics with a Christian faith – comedy descendants like Tim Vine and Milton Jones – his focus was on lifting the whole crowd, not just a niche group of fans. The atmosphere of sheer joy at these shows today owes a debt to Doddy; in each case you have to be there, caught up in the live experience of one bizarre individual with mad hair facing the rest of us with one intention: to make us laugh our socks off. He was a walking talking reminder that comedy’s sole goal is to spread joy.'
His was a noble mission.
Respect There something special about Doddys fan base. A kind of unique bond amongst fans I see in place. Described as a ‘kindred spirit’ on a facebook page. Most Doddy fans seem to connect, whatever age! That’s because Doddy to all generations appealed. A common theme appears in our stories revealed. Respect and appreciation is that common theme. The Squire and his audience, one huge happy team! Happy to chat, be it on the street or stage door. Does a similar bond exist elsewhere, I’m not so sure? In this instant World of throwaway success and fame. Audience appreciation seems to be on the wane. I’ve discovered when Doddys fans dip into the well. For all their lovely memories and stories to tell. I know by now what I’ll hear and what to expect. That Doddy treated his fans with the utmost respect. Lovely poem written by Mike Bartram
