Diddy, really?
SIR KEN DODD’S WIDOW IS CELEBRATING HIS EXTRAORDINARY LIFE IN A NEW BIOGRAPHY. SHE TALKS TO MARION McMULLEN ABOUT THE SQUIRE OF KNOTTY ASH
WE have Sir Ken Dodd to thank for adding colourful words like marmalise, tattyfilarious, tatty-bye and plumptiousness to the English language.
He also introduced us to the Diddymen, jam butty mines and tickling sticks, was a talented ballad singer and his record-breaking 42-week run at the London Palladium has never been beaten.
Ken was a national institution. His fivehour stage shows were legendary and he was still performing his hilarious theatrical marathons right up to the age of 90. But despite his nationwide fame and larger-than-life stage persona, he was a very private person and his wife Anne, Lady Dodd, has been working with comedy scriptwriter and television producer Tony Nicholson to produce the first in-depth account of his astonishing story.
The result is The Squire of Knotty Ash… and his Lady – An intimate biography of Sir Ken Dodd.
“Tony’s done a great job and we’ve amassed things we think Ken would have done and said,” Anne says. “Ken had been approached in the past by different publishers. Had he survived, it would have been a perfect time for him to write during the pandemic, but I hope we’ve done him proud.”
Kenneth Arthur Dodd was born in Liverpool Maternity Hospital on November 8, 1927. His older brother Billy was two at the time and his younger sister June came along later three years later. Ken used to joke he was the middle one of three siblings - “One of each”.
He always said the funniest man he ever met was his coal merchant father Arthur and he would arrange family outings to the Shakespeare Theatre in Liverpool every week, sparking
Ken’s love of performing.
His parents bought him a Punch and Judy set when he was eight and he and Billy would stage shows for neighbours and friends.
“When he was at school he used to put on backyard shows with his brother and admission was a pictorial cigarette card and, if anyone heckled them, they would pick up a clod of earth and throw it at them,” laughs Anne.
“At the age of seven or eight he even had a business card printed.” Ken’s father Arthur would joke about an imaginary doctor called Dr Chuckabutty and Ken later performed under the name Professor Yaffle Chuckabutty – Operatic Tenor & Sausage Knotter – and wrote his first comedy script with his father when he was nine. In fact, 80 years later he was still introducing his ventriloquist doll Dicky Mint using the same script.
His father also helped him develop an early routine around old music hall song The Road To Mandalay, based on a poem by Rudyard Kipling which became a favourite of his live shows over the years and saw him performing in a pith helmet and ill-fitting khaki shorts, trailing pots, pans, buckets, a false leg and even a kitchen sink.
Ken also set up his own business venture when he was 19, his day job saw him selling cleaning items under the name KayDee Products before he began performing professionally full-time.
Happiness and Tears were among the 14 hits he had in the charts in the Swinging Sixties and the Beatles greatly admired him. A young John Lennon even presented him with a business card asking him if he could help get them some bookings.
Anne still lives in Ken’s childhood home in Knotty Ash with their poodle Rufus and says the house is filled with thousands of Ken’s books and papers on comedy.
“There’s also two attics full of books,” she laughs.
“I’ve no idea where they came from. Ken did ask for his notebooks to be destroyed after his death, but I just couldn’t do it. There are about 700 of them. Some with jottings for ideas and others with space left to add a bit more later.
“I did think of burying him with his ventriloquist doll – always a doll, never a dummy – Dickie Mint, but in the end Dickie Mint stayed with me. He means a lot because he is such a part of Ken.
“I still get lots of letters from people of all ages saying they wish Ken was still with us now through these difficult times. His comedy has not dated and it just reaches so many people of all ages.”
Film star Peter O’Toole and Dame Edna Everage creator Barry Humphries were among the famous names who came backstage to meet the comedy star and Anne and Ken would tour all over the country notching up around 100,000 miles a year.
They often stayed at Travelodges between shows with their dog, Anne doing the driving. She says one theatre once refused to let them in with their dog which led to Ken declaring “No dog, no Dodd”.
“In later years, when he was getting on in his 80s, several stage managers said to me ‘I don’t believe it. He’s been standing here, sipping a cup of tea and a bit slumped down and he goes on and faces the audience and it takes 30 to 40 years off,” says Anne.
“That was just Ken. He never ever cancelled a show even when he was doing pantomime with a bad back. That’s Dr Showbusiness.
“When asked where was his favourite theatre, he would always respond ‘the one I am playing tomorrow’ because it was the audience that was really important.
“He had a “giggle map” of all the theatres he played and it’s now online (@KenDoddFdn #gigglemap) for everyone to enjoy.”
When asked where was his favourite theatre, he would always respond ‘the one I’m playing tomorrow’