The comedian, who died in 2018, will be remembered in a new exhibition that brings together props, costumes and an interactive ‘giggle map’Tickling sticks, a Dicky Mint puppet and a Yorick skull complete with protruding teeth will go on display in Sept…
Continue ReadingHot Water club in Liverpool received more than 4,000 angry messages after reports suggested it was part of status certification pilotCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageA comedy club has pulled out of a trial to test how venues …
Continue ReadingShakespeare at a cricket ground, a festival in a bombed-out church and park-bench drama – plus more socially distanced shows to enjoy this monthAugust is over but there’s still time to enjoy open-air theatre season. Presented in York’s Rowntree Park, M…
Continue ReadingPaul O’Grady’s family cheered him outside court. Alan Davies couldn’t get a word in over lunch. And he got Frank Cottrell Boyce by the chuckle muscle. Stars remember the brilliantly bizarre comedian
If Doddy was doing a show in Liverpool, it was always packed out. He had a fabulous imagination that gripped children and adults. As a kid I got the Diddymen annual and would see him at the theatre and just be completely entranced. At Christmas we’d watch him on TV at my auntie’s. She’d scream with laughter. My auntie and my mum used to go and stand outside the courts to show support during the trial over his taxes. When he came out, they’d shout: “We’re behind you, Ken! Good luck, lad!” He was very much loved in Liverpool.
Related: Ken Dodd: last of the music-hall maestros
Related: Ken Dodd: farewell to the tattifilarious marathon man of comedy
Continue ReadingFans remember comedy legend who ‘broke the mould’ at house where he was born and died
A pile of flowers and feather dusters – or “tickling sticks” – has begun to grow outside the 18th-century house in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, where the comedian Ken Dodd was born and died.
Allan Grice, a 71-year-old former senior fire officer, made the three-hour journey from Wakefield in West Yorkshire to Dodd’s home to hand-deliver a card of condolence, after hearing of the comedian’s death on the radio early on Monday.
Related: ‘An ordinary guy who was also a comedy genius’: readers on Ken Dodd
Continue ReadingFans remember comedy legend who ‘broke the mould’ at house where he was born and died
A pile of flowers and feather dusters – or “tickling sticks” – has begun to grow outside the 18th-century house in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, where the comedian Ken Dodd was born and died.
Allan Grice, a 71-year-old former senior fire officer, made the three-hour journey from Wakefield in West Yorkshire to Dodd’s home to hand-deliver a card of condolence, after hearing of the comedian’s death on the radio early on Monday.
Related: ‘An ordinary guy who was also a comedy genius’: readers on Ken Dodd
Continue ReadingComedian with an endless desire to make people laugh known for his tickling sticks, Diddymen and marathon stage performances
The last great “front-cloth” comic of our times, and the last standing true vaudevillian, Ken Dodd, who has died aged 90, was even more than that – a force of nature, a whirlwind, an ambulant torrent of surreal invention, physical and verbal, whose Liverpudlian cheek masked the melancholy of an authentic clown. “This isn’t television, missus,” he’d say to the front stalls, “you can’t turn me off.” And then he would embark on an odyssey of gag-spinning that, over five hours, would beat an audience into submission, often literally, banging a huge drum and declaring that if we did not like the jokes he would follow us home and shout them through the letter-box.
He entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1974 with a marathon mirth-quake at the Royal Court Liverpool lasting three hours, 30 minutes and six seconds. But his solo shows, in which he would perform three 90-minute-plus sets between magic acts, or a female trumpeter (the formidable Joan Hinde), or a pianist playing country music (his partner Anne Jones), frequently lasted much longer. One good thing, he would say, was that you always went home in the daylight. “And the sooner you laugh at the jokes,” he would say, “the sooner you can go home,” as if we were in school. He admitted that his was an educational show – when you did get home you would think: “That taught me a lesson!”
Continue ReadingThe entertainer Sir Ken Dodd has died at the age of 90, just two days after marrying his long-term partner, Anne Jones. Dodd died on Sunday in the house in which he was born, in the Liverpool suburb of Knotty Ash. His publicist, Robert Holmes…
Continue ReadingWith a gag for every occasion, the tattyfilarious comic clocks up 50,000 miles a year performing his epic standup shows. He talks about stage fright, playing Yorick for ‘Sir Kenneth All-Bran’ and taking on the audience like a gladiator
Is theatre the best rejuvenating pill on the market? I’ve recently talked to a sprightly, 92-year-old Peter Brook and seen the 90-year-old playwright Peter Nichols hold an audience spellbound. I’m also recovering from two extraordinary encounters with Ken Dodd, who turns 90 next week: one was a private lunch in Liverpool, the other a public lunch in London where Sir Ken was lauded by members of the British Music Hall Society. On both occasions, I got a glimpse into the transformative power of comedy. As Ken said to me: “I’m told that before I go out on stage, I look my age. Once I’m there, I suddenly turn into a 32-year-old.”
I was in the church choir – till they found out where the noise was coming from
Related: Ken Dodd: ‘I am so appreciative of what a fantastic start in life my parents gave me’
How many men does it take to change a toilet roll? I don’t know. It’s never been done
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