The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Few tickled crowds like Ken
One of Britain’s best-loved stand-ups leaves a legacy of laughter
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”.
Dodd, who died at the age of 90 on Sunday, 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.
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.
Even when he was taken to hospital for a “minor operation” on New Year’s Eve in 2007, it came just hours after completing a four-hour sell-out gig at Liverpoool’s Philharmonic Hall.
Spending almost the entirety of his life based at his childhood home – a mansion in Knotty Ash in Liverpool – his carefully guarded private life received an unwelcome airing in 1989 when he endured a five-week trial accused of tax fraud. He was acquitted following a brilliant defence by George Carman QC.
The entertainer’s career kicked off after his father bought a Punch and Judy for his eighth birthday, and he began charging school friends twopence to sit on orange boxes and watch the puppets. It was a penny to stand at the back and a cigarette card for the hard-up.
He left school at 14 and worked with his brother Bill, heaving Arley cobbles and Houlton kitchen nuts for six years as part of his father’s business.
But in his spare time, the former choirboy was singing and developing a stand-up comic routine at working men’s clubs – script by his father, costumes and general support by Mrs Dodd. He would describe himself as “Professor Yaffle Chuckabutty. Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter.”
The Theatre Royal, Nottingham, saw his debut in 1954 as Professor Chuckabutty, and within two years he was topping the bill at Blackpool.
This was followed by countless BBC series, including The Ken Dodd Show, Beyond Our Ken and Ken Dodd’s Laughter Show, and he entered the big time in 1965 with the longest-ever run at the London Palladium (42 weeks).
In 1994, his Ken Dodd: An Audience with Ken Dodd show was filmed and released on video, followed in 1996 by the Ken Dodd: Live Laughter Tour and then Another Audience With Ken Dodd in 2002.
Also a well-known singer, in 1964 he released his first single, Happiness, followed by smash hit, Tears, the following year, and then Promises.
Over the 1960s, he entered the Guinness Book of Records for the longest joke-telling session ever – 1,500 jokes in three-and-a-half hours.
Dodd married his partner of 40 years, Anne Jones, on Friday. His first fiancèe, Anita Boutin, died of a brain tumour in 1977 aged 45 after 24 years together. He later found love again with Anne, a former Bluebell dancer.
He was awarded an OBE in 1982 and was dubbed a knight by the Duke of Cambridge in 2017.