Obituary - Sir Ken Dodd, comedian

Died: March 11, 2018

SIR Ken Dodd, who has died aged 90, was an eccentric, idiosyncratic and inventive comedian who became a huge star in the 1960s and then never stopped working. Not only did his career in comedy last for more than 60 years, his stand-up shows were famously long and would often last into the small hours. “The usherettes will be round soon to take your breakfast orders,” he would sometimes joke, and his fans lapped it up.

The reason he kept going for so long – he was still touring well into his 80s – was that for him comedy was a kind of compulsion. He certainly did not need the money (he made a fortune early on in his career and famously was accused of avoiding tax on it) but what he did need was the reaction of the audience. Bob Monkhouse once said that for Ken Dodd, everything off stage was just an interval.

READ MORE: Comedian Sir Ken Dodd dies at his Knotty Ash home aged 90

Speaking to The Herald when he was 83, Sir Ken tried to explain what the motivation was for touring incessantly – at that stage, he was still doing 200 shows a year. "I'm utterly stage struck," he said. “When I'm not working I get a bit edgy. The feeling of hearing an audience laugh is the most beautiful sound in the world.”

His strategy on stage was to fire the gags out (he always aimed for "5tpm" or "titters per minute") rather than explore his own life for material in the style of modern comedians. His shows were also always upbeat and optimistic. His catchphrase was “What a beautiful day!” and he would always end his show with his theme tune Happiness (“Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I possess/I thank the Lord I've been blessed/With more than my share of happiness”).

It was a style that particularly found favour with audiences in the 1960s when Sir Ken became the biggest comedian in Britain. His stage show Doddy’s Here! in 1965 still holds the Palladium record for the longest running comedy show at 42 weeks and confirmed Sir Ken as a comedy superstar, although he had been working solidly as a professional comedian by then for around 10 years.

In pictures: Sir Ken Dodd through the years

He was born – as if there is anyone who doesn’t know it – in Knotty Ash in Liverpool, the middle child of three to Sarah and Arthur Dodd. His childhood was relatively happy, although his father’s gambling sometimes led to visits from the bailiffs. His mother, by contrast, was extremely careful with money and some of Dodd’s friends believed it was Sarah Dodd’s attitude that led to her comedian son’s frugal attitude in his own life. As an adult, he distrusted banks and would hoard money in his house, sometimes six figure sums after he achieved success as a comic.

His first experience of showbusiness was through his father Arthur who took his son to the variety theatres of Liverpool where he watched the likes of Arthur Askey and Ted Ray and discovered his own desire to be perform. His first attempt was ventriloquism after his father bought him a dummy for his eighth birthday. He began doing little performances at charity functions and Scout gang shows and by the time he was 12, the venues had become bigger – he even performed on one occasion at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall.

How tickled we were: Sir Ken Dodd’s best jokes

The same year he got his first taste of professional showbusiness when he answered an ad for dancers in a pantomime and was instead given the job of props boy, although his first job on leaving school was working with his father in the family coal merchant business. He was determined to break into showbusiness somehow, though, and had a break when he auditioned to entertain the forces during the Second World War. He was spotted by Hilda Fallon, who ran a concert party called The Mersey Mites and asked Dodd to join.

By 19, he was still working for his father but had decided to branch out on his own, as a salesman of household products, while also working on his act, which by now had become more comedy than ventriloquism. He started to appear in hotels and theatres all over Liverpool and Birkenhead, sometimes doing two or three shows a night and eventually decided to ditch the salesman act and become a professional comedian instead.

His professional debut was at the Empire Theatre in Nottingham in September 1954 and the same year he appeared at the Glasgow Empire, sometimes known as the graveyard of English comedians. "I was terror-stricken,” he said. "My first line was, 'I suppose you are all wondering why I've sent for you?'

"That got a bit of nervous titter and then a drunk, in the middle of the third or fourth row, uncoiled himself from the seat, looked at me and shouted, 'Crivvens, what a horrible sight!' Then the drunk collapsed back into his seat. The audience roared with laughter and I was saved."

By the following year, Ken Dodd was playing a summer season at Blackpool on the same bill as Morecambe and Wise and by the late 50s, he was topping the bill and had his own TV series The Ken Dodd Show on BBC. Later, the diddymen puppets that appeared on the show got their own series Ken Dodd and the Diddymen

He always finished his stage act by signing a comic song and also became interested in recording ballads. His first Love is Like a Violin was released in 1960; four years later, he released three singles in one year, including what would become his theme tune: Happiness.

READ MORE: Court breaks out in cheers as tax case jury frees Ken Dodd

Some of his comedy material was not, on the face of it, fairly simple (and in later years some of it looked distinctly sexist) but Sir Ken’s loveable personality would often carry the audience through any jokes that didn’t work and he would always take note and change things for the next show. He was also obsessed with composing what he called a Giggle Map of Britain to work out what people in different parts of the country found funny. Following each performance, he would note the date of the performance, how it went, what worked and what did not and how it could be improved.

The nadir of his long career was undoubtedly the tax trial in 1989 (although it did provide a few good jokes for him later on). The allegation was that he had given false returns dating back to 1973 underestimating his income and profit, but to defend him he engaged one of the most famous QCs of the time George Carman.

The trial revealed that he had deposited large amounts of money in banks on the Isle of Man and Jersey although Sir Ken said he thought the offshore deposits were not subject to tax as he had already paid tax on it. He also said that as soon as he discovered this was not the case, he informed the Inland Revenue. He also made no secret of the deposits – far from it. In the end, he was cleared of all charges to much cheering from the public benches.

He was delighted with the verdict but the trial was an uncomfortable process for him and he did not like to talk about it in later years – he preferred instead to get back to work and tour as many theatres as he could. He did occasionally appear on film and TV as well – he is seen in a flashback as Yorick in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet; he also appeared in an episode of Doctor Who in 1987.

He had two significant long-term relationships in his life, first with Anita Boutin who died of a brain tumour in 1977 when she was 45, and secondly with Anne Jones, with whom he tried for several years to have children without success.

He was an honorary fellow of Liverpool’s John Moores University and received an OBE in 1982. He was knighted in 2016 for services to entertainment and charity.

He is survived by Anne Jones, whom he married just days before his death.