Leopards, hat heists and lucky escapes …my crazy life with Ken Dodd
In a hilarious new book, the comedy legend’s widow reveals the highs and lows of 40 years on the road
SIR Ken Dodd travelled 100,000 miles a year when his career was at its busiest. And for more than four decades there was one person at his side for 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 reveals what life on the road was really 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 never drank alcohol before a show, but he’d have a can of lager in the interval.
Never more than that – always just one can. He was quite particular about what he liked, so I’d bring the lager to the theatre with us. He actually had a drink spiked at one theatre in Jersey, which made him ill, so we played safe after that.
He was fussy about his tea too, so I’d take along a kettle, teabags and milk.
Quite often I’d have to go into the corridor to find a plug socket, squatting down on the door to boil a kettle for him. Oh, the glamour of showbusiness!
During the interval, while he was drinking his lager, 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 would get fish and chips for us both.
The east coast, especially Scarborough, had the best fish and chips ever.
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 the summer season in Bridlington, east Yorkshire.
One night, he called out that he was ready to go, so I quickly went to use the backstage ladies’ bathroom before we hit the road.
It was an old-fashioned sort of bathroom with a flimsy 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 blood-curdling loud roar.
I just about leapt out of my skin, feeling pretty vulnerable sitting there on the loo. There was another thud and a loud roar and a ferocious-looking furry face appeared at the frosted glass window next to me. I screamed – it
was a leopard.Yes, a real live leopard! Its paws, with very sharp claws, were scrabbling at the big gap between the panel and the ceiling.
Somehow, while it was still trying to climb over the top of the partition, I managed to make myself decent remarkably quickly, pushed the door open and fled for my life.
The leopard was part of one of the other acts that night.
Magician Johnny Hart used it in an illusion. It turned out that particular night he’d been invited to an after-show party and didn’t have time to take his leopard back to his digs at a local farm, so left it in the backstage ladies’ bathroom, thinking he’d be first back there next morning.
ANOTHER time, after one show in St Albans, I was loading up and somebody pointed to a man running across the car park with a small case and said: “He’s just nicked that out of your boot.”
Nobody had tried to stop him, so I hared off after him. I recognised the case – it was the one containing the iconic Union Jack hat.
Ken would have been lost at the next gig without it, and it wasn’t the kind of thing you could pop into a local shop and buy.
I was so mad I somehow managed to catch up with the man and grabbed at his coat, accidentally pushing him over in the process.
I panicked then, wondering if I’d killed him, but he was fine – a bit breathless and shocked, but not hurt. Cheeky devil, in an almost offended tone, he said: “I only wanted it as a souvenir!” – as though that made it all right.
Ken never liked getting to venues too early. We would plan to arrive an hour and a half before “curtain up”.
But there were often dramas on the way. Once I was driving the car on the motorway with Ken asleep in the passenger seat. A huge articulated lorry kept tailgating me, then passed us, giving a long piercing blast on a painfully loud horn.
I was so mad I stuck my right hand out of the window to shake my fist.
But I must have touched the electric window switch, because the window whirred up and trapped my arm outside, at the elbow.
So now I’m driving with just my left hand, and my right arm is trapped outside the car, waving around like crazy.
I panicked and screamed at Ken: “Wake Up!”, “Take the wheel! My arm’s stuck out of the window!”
These kind of bizarre experiences were all part of the job.Another time we were doing a corporate gig in a posh hotel in Harrogate.
Ken had an audience participation joke he’d do which involved inviting “any lady who is off men” on to the stage and he would present her with a hot water bottle as a daft prize.
This particular day, I’d been having trouble with my back, so I’d filled the hot water bottle and used it to ease the pain during the drive. Just as Ken was about to go on to do his spot I remembered I’d left it on the car seat.
I dashed out to get it but it had to be empty for the gag. Thinking quickly, I squatted down beside the car and noisily poured the water out on to the sloping car park, with it running out the other side of the car.
I suddenly spotted this elegant-looking woman, two cars down, who could obviously see the water running past her feet and my head crouching down.
She yelled: “I think that is absolutely disgusting.” I had no time to explain, so I ran off, waving the offending item over my head, shouting: “Well that’s my hot water bottle emptied!”
Despite constantly travelling up and down the country, Ken never tired of the performing – he absolutely loved it.
Even when he was in hospital, just before he died, he was still planning new shows.
Sadly, he never recovered sufficiently to do it, but the spirit was certainly willing.
●●Extracted by Poppy Danby from The Squire of Knotty Ash… and his Lady – An intimate biography of Sir Ken Dodd by Tony Nicholson with Anne, Lady Dodd, is published by Great Northern Books, on April 1, 2021.
RRP £17.99