In the same year, he topped the charts with 'Tears'. Ken Dodd was devoted to his work, and seldom, if ever, took a holiday. He recorded all his jokes - and the public reaction to them - in a series of little black notebooks, and rehearsed and re-rehearsed his every word and gesture.
Set down in print, much of his material may seem commonplace. It was the way he put it across that counted. Uttered by him, a phrase such as "Good Morning" became charged with outrageous innuendo, and - backed by appropriate pantomime - would throw an audience into paroxysms of laughter. Dodd's catchphrases, most famously "How tickled I am! At a Liverpool theatre in he told jokes at a rate of 10 a minute for more than three hours - a feat that gained him a place in the Guinness Book of Records.
Throughout the s and 80s he was a firm favourite on television and radio, and kept up a punishing schedule of stage appearances. The trial abounded with stories of his eccentricity. It also emerged that he had 20 bank accounts in Jersey and the Isle of Man, and made regular 'cash and carry' flights to deposit money in them which was not declared to the Inland Revenue. The jury was swayed by Dodd's defence counsel George Carman QC, who remarked: "Some accountants are comedians but comedians are never accountants".
He took up his career again and later made light of his court ordeal, quipping "I told the Inland Revenue I didn't owe them a penny because I lived near the seaside. He was still touring in his ninth decade with his shows sometimes lasting into the early hours of the morning. Behind the banter Ken Dodd was a private man, and a serious student of comic theory.
He also created the character of the Diddy Men. Known for his wild hair, protruding teeth and tickling sticks, Sir Ken knighted in the New Year Honours for services to entertainment and charity.
Pictured: Dodd being knighted at Buckingham Palace in March last year. At the time he was awarded the knighthood he said that he had wanted to 'give something back' by helping people with depression. Reflecting on his knighthood he said: 'Now I'd like to help people who need help. I'd like to help people who are depressed. When you're past a certain age, it kicks in. I want to help people who are not enjoying life, I've had such a wonderful life. Sir Ken admitted he'd had a great life and wanted to give back to others when he collected his OBE.
Pictured: The stand-up star with Prince Charles in I'd like to feel that I was useful. I want to feel as though I've put something back into life. Sir Ken was made an honorary fellow of Liverpool John Moores University in and a statue of him was unveiled in Liverpool Lime Street station in How the Squire of Knotty Ash tickled fans for more than 60 years.
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?
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 , it came just hours after completing a four-hour sell-out gig at Liverpoool'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 in Liverpool - his carefully guarded private life received an unwelcome airing in 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 show-business, 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. Dodd would later joke publicly about the case, but it was far from being a laughing matter at the time. The entertainer's career kicked off after his father bought a Punch and Judy for his eighth birthday, and he began charging school friends 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 Arley cobbles and Houlton 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 stand-up comic routine at working men's clubs - script by his father, costumes and general support by Mrs Dodd.
He would describe himself as 'Professor Yaffle Chuckabutty. Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter. Also a well-known singer, in he released his first single, Happiness, followed by smash hit, Tears, the following year, and then Promises. Over the s, he entered the Guinness Book of Records for the longest joke-telling session ever - 1, jokes in three-and-a-half hours. Dodd married his partner of 40 years, Anne Jones, on Friday.
His first fiancee, Anita Boutin, died of a brain tumour in aged 45 after 24 years together. He later found love again with Anne, a former Bluebell dancer. He was awarded an OBE in and was dubbed a knight by the Duke of Cambridge in - the year of his 90th birthday - in recognition of both his comedic legacy and his charity work.
For the milestone birthday on November 8, 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. 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. 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'. 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.
I don't like to interrupt her. I'll follow you home and I'll shout jokes through your letterbox' - when he was still going strong at a show as it approached midnight. Nobody has ever seen her lips move. Of course I do. I have a handrail around the bed. It is years to the night since that balcony collapsed' - Addressing people in The Gods at a provincial theatre. Tell her a joke on a Wednesday. Nobody knows. It's never been tried. That's a hell of a long time to wait for a laugh. I heard a man leaving the other night, saying: 'Well, that taught me a lesson'.
Some of Sir Ken's shows could last more than five hours. Dodd was one of three children of a coal merchant, Arthur Dodd, and his wife, Sarah; he continued to live in the 18th-century former farmhouse he was born in, a run-down double-fronted manse with adjoining cottages and a large garden in the suburb of Knotty Ash in Liverpool. He was known for walking backwards to Holt high school and attending dance classes with his sister, June.
At the age of 19, he branched out as a self-employed salesman, knocking on doors with his own Kay-Dee brand of disinfectant while developing his ventriloquist act.
He extended his stomping ground to Manchester, having acquired an agent, David Forrester he never signed a contract in the 19 years they stayed together , which led to more open doors through contact with Bernard Delfont and the Stoll Moss group.
Suddenly, in addition to playing the Palladium twice nightly and three times on Saturdays, he was on the radio, on television and cutting more records — he had four top 10 hits in the next few years. Increasingly, going solo in a breakaway from the variety show format, he mined the elements of endurance in his performance and our attendance.
A cloud crossed over at the end of the decade when he faced charges of cheating the Inland Revenue and of false accounting. In , he was given the Freedom of the City of Liverpool. He was then voted the greatest Merseysider in a poll on local radio and in the Liverpool Echo Lennon and McCartney were runners-up and in his statue, complete with tickling stick — and that of the battling Labour MP Bessie Braddock — were cast in bronze on Lime Street station.
And if his signature tune was Happiness, he would always leave you with a lament in Absent Friends for loved ones and the departed music hall stars in whose wake he so gloriously trailed. He really was the last in the line, and acknowledged by his peers as one of the greatest ever. He was made OBE in , an honorary fellow of John Moore University, Liverpool, in , an honorary DLitt at Chester in , and was knighted, after a sustained public campaign, last year.
He was a deeply private man, which is why the two court cases hurt him so much.
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