So he’s gone to the great jam butty mine in the sky.
I first saw him perform one Summer in Scarborough in the mid-1970s. It was a variety show in the old tradition – the first half featured jugglers, magicians, singers and the like. After an interval it was all Doddy. For well over three hours. It was a hysterical experience – actual hysteria. A death of a thousand cuts. I have written this before, but it is the only time I have seen people leave a theatre doubled up in pain and leaving because they can’t stand the onslaught any more. You are sharing this bizarre experience with complete strangers – you’re all trapped with each laugh snowballing into the next one,
The tickling stick was very apt – if you can remember what it is like to be tickled to such an extent that even the *thought* of the next one gets you on the floor, clutching your sides, then you are close to knowing what it was like to witness this man perform.
I saw him a couple more times and he was brilliant again – but that first time was the one I remember. I know he is not universally loved – but I thought he was a genius.
And why not?
As a young man I hated Ken Dodd with a fierce passion – those stupid Diddymen and those godawful songs that clogged up the charts.
Somewhere in the late seventies an older colleague dragged me screaming to see him live. Memory says the show started around 8.30 and finished well past midnight. For the last couple of hours I had gone past laughing into a semi-stupor, I tried calling “Stop, you bastard” but I was gone, completely gone.
Not my usual kind of humour at all but most probably the funniest (first) two hours entertainment I have ever had
This will inevitably turn into a list of jokes…”I just read a book about Stockholm Syndrome, it started off badly but by the end I really liked it.”
If The Light and I ever got married and I took her surname rather than she mine I would be called Ken Dodd. True story.
What a beautiful day! What a beautiful day for sticking a cucumber through a letterbox and shouting “the Martians have landed!”
Possibly the funniest man who ever lived.
Judging by the interview he gave in a documentary that was aired not so very long ago, he was a pretty serious and very thoughtful chap when not “on” and performing.
All I can add by way of tribute is to face towards Knotty Ash and solemnly intone the words, “Hey willy-wollocky, Hootch-can-doodle-aroo, a rashety roo-roo-roo-roo”
The Wee Cooper O’ Fife? Unless Doddy changed the names to protect the innocent he was called John Dougal http://scottish-music-lyrics.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/wee-cooper-o-fife.html
His version appears on the utterly terrifying Ken Dodd and the Diddymen album. (Relax, it’s on Music For Pleasure)
At the risk of trying everyone’s patience with more of the same, I was dragged to see Ken Dodd by my parents when I was, I think, 15 and far too cool to waste my time on a useless old git like him (this would have been about 1980). I was determined to hate the show and not laugh once. And well before the end I was in agony from laughing and desperate for him to stop. I have seen lots of other funny comedians and even been reduced to a similar state (once only, by Billy Connolly in the early 1980s) but I went to all of them willingly and hoping to enjoy myself. Ken Dodd was something else.
Great tribute, Black. He was definitely one of a kind.
I used to live very close to him and used to see him out and about, as the hospital I trained at, and where I lived, was only a few hundred yards from his house. I was quite tickled when the set above us took us to the local pub on our first night and it was the Knotty Ash! I once nearly got run over at the bottom of his street and when I looked up he was sitting in the passenger seat. Not the way I wanted to go.
Shortly after his tax business I was stood behind him in the local fruit and veg shop where he swore blind he’d paid with a twenty, until the lass at the till showed him she didn’t have any twenties in her till. Made me laugh anyway. But I met him at one of the many hospital fundraisers he attended and he was a really nice chap and, as people above have said, very funny.
I nearly crashed the car driving along the M62 when for the first time I saw the sign to Knotty Ash – up till then I thought it was a figment of Ken D’s imagination.
Years later I used to ferry my son back and fro Liverpool Uni. Son, with no knowledge of the Diddymen, when espying said sign would put on a mock Jamaican voice and pronounce “Money mi a pree, Knotty Ash mon”. Always made me laugh.
He was unique that’s for sure, and probably the only comedian of that generation who I would willingly watch.
Talking with a friend and due to a mishearing and misunderstanding he thought I’d seen Sir Ken in Swan Lake. So I produced this for him.
Had to leave some time after 12 midnight as I had work the next day, he was still in full flow after waving his thermos flask and sandwiches at the start exposing we could be in for a long night.
A good innings. saw a recent pic of him over the weekend and thought he was looking very frail. Not really a fan, but never saw him live. Loved him when I was about 10.
Good to hear his number one smash hit single on national radio again this morning.
Altogether now, “A penis, a penis, the greatest thing a man possess….”
Really, how childish.
I saw his Xmas show at Liverpool Empire, in the late 1960s.
Sadly all I recall is him singing Happiness, though I guess I should be thankful this was before he had recorded Tears.
I was an anklebiter in the mid sixties. The Daleks never scared me; it was Doddy that had me hiding behind the sofa! Saw him live many times, usually as part of summer season shows in Scarborough or Blackpool on holidays with the folks. Quite simply, the greatest stand-up comedian there has ever been, and ever will be. A man who can truly be described as a genius. No doubt the BBC Omnibus documentary/interview with him will be brought out from the archive; well worth watching if it is.
EDIT: The documentary is actually Arena, not Omnibus, and it’s on BBC1 at 10.45 tonight.
Billy Connolly was pretty great at his peak.
Get me a Bovril!
Indeed he was, but not quite at the level of Doddy. A different beast; Doddy was a gagman, I don’t think Billy ever actually told a joke.
That’s a really good point. Billy Connolly can say something like “don’t you find that extraordinary?” and get a huge laugh.
And that’s extraordinary in itself.
Jojoba!
ut loooks like a wee jobbeh!
He was awarded an Honorary degree a tLJMU in 1997 when I got my MSc.
His speech was marvellous.
An old joke now outdated:
“Ken Dodd died today”
“Did ‘e?”
“Yes, I’m afraid he did.”
Whither his father’s canine?
No. Doddy!
I met Ken Dodd in the 1970s while at work. I was an electrician working for The N.C.B. before it became British Coal. Myself and my mate ‘Crossy’ had just got changed into our workwear at the start of our afternoon-shift when we heard the familiar voice of our Union Man shouting “Oi, you two scruffy c—s get over here”. We ambled over mumbling to ourselves “What does that daft twot want?”. When we got to our U.M. he informed us to “Stay here don’t fecking move, you’re going to have your photos taken”. So we stood around, couldn’t give a toss, all this was in works time, everything’s good. After about 10 minutes U.M. walks over with a bloke carrying a big camera and this pale looking bloke with his hair all over the place. Yes it was Doddy and we had some publicity photos taken with him for a Miner’s Gala in Blackpool to be published in the industry rag, the originally named ‘Coal News’. Ken looked bloody ill then but he was a great guy laughing and joking with us for what seemed minutes but in reality was closer to an hour. A lovely man and a man of the people. Rest in Peace? Nah, Doddy will have them pissing in their kecks wherever he is now.
There was a story on Twitter which told how Dodd attended a function at a university. As he was chatting to some of the staff someone tried to drag him away because ‘there are some important people I want you to meet’. His unbeatable reply was, ‘Everyone here is important.’
The Hedgehog Society are going to miss him, apparently.
Without wishing to let the light in on magic, that is clearly not a real hedgehog.
You’ve clearly never put an air hose up the bum of a hedgehog and given it a little air…
Well, I’m no scientist.
I don’t even have a reverb unit.
Oho!
Maybe not, but you’ve still got more chance of winning the World Cup than England..
Ah, but I gave those Space Invaders a pasting!
I take it the hedgehog is the one on the right?
He was very funny. Not really my cup of tea but whenever I saw him being interviewed, he clearly had funny bones. Watched some of the Arena documentary last night and LOL’d more than once.
Ken Dodd’s jokes were brilliant and quick-fire. He was a natural comedian who actually studied comedy. He claimed to be the only man he knew who could eat an orange through a tennis racket. He was also topical – one of his best lines was around the time of the Falklands war; he said he knew there would be a war because when he drove past Vera Lynn’s house he could here her gargling! He also addressed a large-chested woman in the audience at one of his shows. He told the crowd that the lady in question was looking great because she was on a peanut and melon diet. The peanuts weren’t doing much but the melons seemed to be working well.