Comic who had to be in complete control

WHEN once asked what part of his job he enjoyed most, Dodd replied: ‘The control it gives me over people.’

‘Control. That’s the thing with Doddy,’ says his friend Dave Dutton. ‘He manipulated people. He manipulated the audience. He manipulated the writers.

‘He controlled the audience on stage, and I think he continued it off stage because he studied psychology in his spare time.

‘And that enabled him to inflict his personality on people.’

The importance of control to Dodd sheds light on many of his relationships – not least those with women.

He was engaged to Anita Boutin for 22 years until her death in 1977 without ever marrying her, and his engagement to Anne Jones lasted four decades until he finally married her two days before he died. Dodd needed the security of those loving relationships, just as he felt he needed the security of the BBC in an insecure business – but at the same time, he seemingly felt the need to regard himself as free from commitments from either on paper.

In 1987 he told Professor Anthony Clare that he had never married because he’d been too busy, just as he claimed his trademark of sticking his hair up on end had been a by-product of being too busy to get his hair cut.

Clare found these claims ‘somewhat unconvincing to say the least’, suggesting to the comedian that he always seemed to find the time for things he really wanted to do.

Clare concluded that his ‘desire to retain control of his life and circumstances proved too strong’.