Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
LADY DODD DAY
SIR Ken Dodd travelled 100,000 miles a year at the height of his career. And for over four decades there was one person at his side every show – his right-hand woman and long-time girlfriend Lady Anne.
The couple married just two days before his death in 2018, but had already shared a lifetime of adventures.
Here, in our exclusive serialisation of her new book, The Squire of Knotty Ash… and his Lady, his widow Lady Anne reveals what life on the road was like with the comedy legend – and his tickling sticks…
In the crucial 30 minutes before a show Ken always had a set routine – all in complete silence.
I’d make him his cup of tea. He’d get out his old wooden stage make-up box, which he’d had since the 1950s.
He’d lay out all his greasepaint in a particular way, then start putting it on, thinking about what he was going to say in his opening spot. Then he would just sit there looking at his bow tie in his hands for a couple of minutes. He’d be saying a quiet prayer to himself.
The last part of the pre-show ritual was in the wings, just before he went on. He’d give me a kiss. Even if we’d “had words”, he always gave me a kiss, then he’d walk out onstage.
Ken would have a can of lager in the interval. Never more than that. He was quite particular about what he liked, so I’d bring the lager to the theatre with us.
He had a drink spiked in Jersey, so we played safe after that. He was fussy about his tea too, so I’d take along a kettle, teabags and milk. Often I’d have to go into the corridor to find a socket, squatting down to boil a kettle. Oh, the glamour of showbusiness!
During the interval, I’d make him a bowl of soup. Tinned Baxter’s Asparagus soup was his favourite.
The one break with tradition was if we were on the east coast I’d get fish and chips. The east coast, especially Scarborough, had the best fish and chips.
In 1978, when Ken’s father was terminally ill, Ken would try to get home to Liverpool as often as possible, even though he was headlining in summer season in Bridlington, East Yorkshire.
One night, he called out he was ready to go, so I quickly went to use the backstage ladies’ bathroom.
It was an old-fashioned bathroom with a flimsy
I screamed, Its paws, with sharp claws, were scrabbling at the gap LADY ANNE ON SCARY ENCOUNTER WITH BIG CAT
five-foot wooden partition separating the loo from the bath, creating a sort of cubicle which didn’t go all the way to the ceiling. The partition had a frosted glass panel halfway up.
Suddenly there was a thud of something, or somebody, heavy hurling themselves against the partition, with a