MY BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH 3 L ATE GREATS
Prince Charles, welcoming Cheryl Tweedy-Cole-FernandezVersini-Surname-Free to a Prince’s Trust bash. KEN Dodd and Jim Bowen were comic geniuses and Stephen Hawking was a genius with a comic streak. I was privileged to meet all three of them. Doddy was fascinated by the psychology of humour and studied Freud, Schopenhauer and Kant. “Freud said humour was an explosion of psychic energy,” he told me once. “Except Freud never played Friday night second house at the Glasgow Empire.” Jim was a deadpan master of selfdeprecation. He pretended he was thick and said Bullseye was only a hit because of his cock-ups. “At the height of the miners’ strike, I asked a contestant, ‘So, what do you do for a living?’ He said,‘I’m a miner, Jim, I’ve been out of work for nine months.’ I replied, ‘Smashing.’” But in 1992 I watched Jim address 1,200 Oxford University students – and knock them dead. And I witnessed Professor Hawking’s great sense of fun at a Downing Street reception. An electric ramp broke down meaning his wheelchair got stuck outside the No10 ladies loo – with aides going into meltdown. He thought it was hilarious. I reckon the three would have got on famously. So I shall imagine them out there in the cosmos having a laugh. Doddy doing a tattyfilarious turn, Hawking eyeing the time and saying “Keep it brief” and Jim telling the Prof that a red hole is worth more than a black. Super Doddy, Smashing Jim and the great Stephen Hawking. I just wish Jim could give them their BFH – Bus Fare Home.