Did Sir Ken have last laugh over tax affairs?
● Comedy legend and chief of the Diddy Men was born and died in same house
He was the instantly recognisable comic famed for cracking gags after being acquitted of tax fraud. Now Sir Ken Dodd may have had the last laugh over his financial affairs – by getting married just two days before he died.
Sir Ken Dodd’s widow said the world had “lost a most lifeenhancing, brilliant, creative comedian” as she paid tribute to her husband following his death aged 90.
The comic died on Sunday, at the home he was born in, just two days after getting married.
And speaking outside their home, in the Liverpool suburb of Knotty Ash, where floral tributes and tickling sticks were left outside, Lady Anne Dodd said she had “lost a most wonderful husband”.
She said she had been “overwhelmed by the love and affection” which she had received after the much-loved star’s death was announced yesterday.
She said: “The world has lost a most life-enhancing, brilliant, creative comedian with an operatically trained voice, who just wanted to make people happy.
“He lived to perfect his art and entertain his live and adoring audiences.
“I’ve been overwhelmed by the love and affection which I’ve already received from dear friends and the public and I thank you all for being here.”
The Liverpool comedian, famous for his epic stand-up shows, his tickling sticks and Diddy Men, left hospital on 27 February at the end of a sixweek stay for a chest infection.
He wed Lady Anne, his partner of 40 years and a former Bluebell dancer, on Friday and an announcement was due to go out later this week about the marriage. She was at his bedside when he died.
Sir Ken, known for his unruly hair and teeth, performed his very last show just months ago, in his native city, at the end of December.
But all dates for this year were cancelled when the star became unwell.
Sir Ken, brandishing a tickling stick and greeted by his Diddy Men, had vowed to carry on with his tattyfilarious comedy when he left hospital last month.
“Once I’ve recovered I’ll get back to doing the job, which is the only job I’ve ever had,” he said at the time .“w hile i was in here, I wrote some new jokes, so it should be all right.”
Stars from Dawn French to David Walliams, Sandi Toksvig, Brian Conley, Les Dennis and Dara O’briain paid tribute following his death.
The prolific comic entered the Guinness Book of Records for the longest joke-telling session ever – 1,500 jokes in threeand-a-half hours – during the 1960s.
His TV shows included The Ken Dodd Show, Beyond Our Ken, Ken Dodd’s Laughter Show and An Audience With Ken Dodd and he entered the big time in 1965 with the longest-ever run at the London Palladium – 42 weeks.
Also a well-known singer, in 1964 the star released his first single, Happiness, followed by smash hit Tears in 1965 – the third-highest UK single of the 1960s – and then Promises.
He was knighted in honour of his decades-long showbiz career and charity work in March last year.
Sir Ken was acquitted following a five-week trial, accused of tax fraud, in 1989.
“The world has lost a most life-enhancing, brilliant, creative comedian with an operatically trained voice, who just wanted to make people happy”
LADY ANNE DODD
Sir Kenneth Arthur Dodd, OBE. Born: 8 November 1927, Liverpool. Died: 11 March 2018, Lancashire, aged 90.
Sir Ken Dodd, master of tickling sticks, Diddy Men and tattifilarious comedy, reduced fans to helplessness with his bucktoothed grin, a shake of the through-a-hedge-backwards hair and a cry of “How tickled I am”.
Hands on hip and in full command of his audience, he would demand: “Do you give in?” and later say of a particularly successful show: “By heck, we took no prisoners that night.”
Dodd, who died at the age of 90 on Sunday, continued to perform right through to his later years, bringing the energy and stamina of a man half his age to his manic routines in theatres up and down the land. There was no let-up in his astonishing ability to reel off joke after joke, with the rapidity of a machine gun for literally hours on end.
Even when he was taken to hospital for a “minor operation” on New Year’s Eve in 2007, it came just hours after completing a four-hour sellout gig at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall.
But behind the hair, teeth and offbeat humour dwelt a mass of contradictions and insecurities.
Spending almost the entirety of his life based at his childhood home – a rambling mansion in Knotty Ash, Liverpool – his carefully guarded private life received an unwelcome airing in 1989 when he endured a five-week trial accused of tax fraud. He was acquitted following a brilliant defence by George Carman QC.
After 35 years in showbusiness, he told the court: “Since I am stripped naked in this court, I might as well tell you the lot.”
He explained: “I am not mean, but I am nervous of money, nervous of having it, nervous of not having it,” and described money as a yardstick of success – “important only because I have nothing else”.
The trial transformed Liverpool Crown Court into a sell-out theatre, with fellow comics Eric Sykes and Roy Hudd called as character witnesses.
His counsel described him as a fantasist stamped with lifelong eccentricities – such as keeping love letters in a safety deposit box and hoarding £336,000 in the attic – due to a close-knit family upbringing.
Dodd would later joke publicly about the case, but it was far from a laughing matter at the time.
He was known by colleagues for being careful with cash and when he was earning up to £10,000 per month, he told accountants that he lived on annual expenses of just £3,500, had not bought a new suit for two or three years and never had a holiday until he was 51.
The entertainer’s career kicked off after his father bought him a Punch and Judy set for his eighth birthday, and he began charging schoolfriends twopence to sit on orange boxes and watch the puppets. It was a penny to stand at the back and a cigarette card for the hard-up.
He left school at 14 and worked with his brother Bill, heaving cobbles and kitchen nuts for six years as part of his father’s business.
But in his spare time, the former choirboy was singing and developing a standup comic routine at working men’s clubs – script by his father, costumes and general support from Mrs Dodd. He would describe himself as “Professor Yaffle Chuckabutty. Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter.”
The Theatre Royal, Nottingham, saw his £75-a-week debut in 1954 as Professor Chuckabutty, and within two years he was topping the bill at Blackpool, with bits such as the famous Diddy Men, the Broken Biscuit Repair Works, the Jam Butty Mines, the Moggy Ranch and the Treacle Wells.
This was followed by countless BBC series, including The Ken Dodd Show, Beyond Our Ken and Ken Dodd’s Laughter Show. A huge sign of his popularity came in 1965 with the longest-ever run at the London Palladium – 42 weeks.
In 1994 his An Audience with Ken Dodd show was filmed and released on video, followed in 1996 by the Ken Dodd: Live Laughter Tour and then Another Audience With Ken Dodd in 2002.
Also a talented singer, in 1964 he released his first single, Happiness, followed by smash hit, Tears, the following year, and then Promises.
In the 1960s he entered the Guinness Book of Records for the longest joke-telling session ever – 1,500 jokes in three-anda-half hours.
Dodd married his partner of 40 years, Anne Jones, on Friday. His first fiancee, Anita Boutin, died of a brain tumour in 1977 aged 45 after 24 years together.
He later found love again with Anne, a former Bluebell dancer. He was awarded an OBE in 1982 and was dubbed a knight by the Duke of Cambridge in 2017 – the year of his 90th birthday – in recognition of both his comic legacy and his charity work.
For the milestone birthday on 8 November he was honoured by the Knotty Ash community with a party serving up jam butties and Diddy pies at Liverpool Town Hall.
A Freeman of the City, he told the Liverpool Echo of the impressive anniversary: “There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s compulsory! And it’s no use living in the past – it’s cheaper but you can’t live in the past.
“Knotty Ash is my home – it’s the centre of my life and always has been. My family are still here with me in memories. I had the most wonderful family – fabulous mother and father, and wonderful brother and sister.”
Days previously, he shared his showmanship techniques with the Guardian, telling the newspaper: “You’re like a gladiator. You buckle on your sword and helmet and you have to take on the audience.
“You have to do a show with an audience and structure the act so that you start with the ‘hello’ gags, then the topicals, then the surreal stuff... Eventually, you can go wherever you want and say whatever comes into your head: ‘How many men does it take to change a toilet roll? I don’t know. It’s never been done’.”
“A performer has to have something in his or her psyche I would call ‘a comic imp’... That imp is always with you sitting on your shoulder or in your shadow.”
As he marked more than 60 years of performing he vowed to the Mirror newspaper, and his fans: “I can’t let the British public down, as long as they keep turning up –I’ll be there to give back the enormous happiness they’ve given me.”