Glory of Les Dawson and Britain before we lost our sense of fun

Picture the fate of any modern comedian who dares try a gag like this on a primetime panel show. Les Dawson, licking his lips, looked at Sheila Ferguson of the three Degrees and told her: ‘if i ever get you in that dressing room, it’ll be One Degree under.’

that was Les presenting Blankety Blank on BBc1 for the first time, in 1984. Sheila watched her appearance on the quiz show and wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. ‘it’s not a face you’re gonna forget,’ she said, as Les gurned at her on the screen.

today he’d be forced to apologise, cancelled and sacked before the Nine O’clock News. But this was a Britain before we lost our sense of humour.

A snippet from a local tV interview in the late eighties, aired on Les Dawson: The Lost Tapes (itV), showed how easily we once understood the gulf between comedy and reality. Les, in a voluminous green dress, was doing publicity for the christmas panto — his first appearance on stage since the death from cancer of his adored wife, Meg, in 1986.

the reporter wondered if his bereavement meant an end to the wicked gags about his wife and her mother. Les looked aggrieved: ‘No! She wouldn’t have it any other way.’

the jokes are even funnier now, if that’s possible, for being so irredeemably un-Pc. this one’s from his first stand-up routine: ‘there was a knock on the door — i knew damn well it was the wife’s mother, because the mice were throwing themselves on the traps.’

Jason Manford, a Dawson devotee, had the treat of exploring the archive maintained by Les’s second wife, tracy, and going through the comic’s notebooks.

One page listed 20 one-liners that started: ‘i wouldn’t say my wife’s fat but... She hangs her bra out to dry and a camel makes love to it... She was a decoy for a whaling fleet . . .’

tracy’s home videos showed a different side, with Les as an adoring father, cuddling their baby charlotte and recording messages for her to watch when she was older — as she did here, choked with emotion.

With his health failing, he knew he wouldn’t see her grow up. But he relished grim jokes and would have seen the funny side of his death — from a massive heart attack, aged 62, in the middle of a medical check-up. ‘You know what a hospital is?’ he once said. ‘An abattoir with splints.’

We glimpsed him doing sketches in German on Deutsche tV — though quite how he landed that gig was not explained. And though the calibre of fans sharing their own memories was top-notch, including John thomson and Jimmy tarbuck, no one pointed out that much of Les’s material would be verboten now.

until we face up to that, we may never get our sense of humour back.

George clarke was his usual beaming self on Remarkable Renovations (c4), but he wasted the chance for endless bad puns as he visited a couple who’d bought a disused bank near Newquay in cornwall. He could have asked about ‘quality cheques’ and ‘holes in the wall’ — but he didn’t even say: ‘it’s a bit over-draughty in here.’

A segment where the two-ton vault door was melted down and recast as an iron bathtub was interesting, but otherwise George was struggling.

rival shows use virtual reality and realistic 3D graphics.

Here the budget is so low that we saw only floor plans and line drawings.

that makes it harder to picture what’s going on. Next time, George, ask for a loan.