Ken Dodd: still happy at 78

7 October 2006

More than 50 years after his debut, the Squire of Knotty Ash plays 120 shows a year, each lasting five hours. He tells Michael Henderson what comedy is — and quotes Aristotle

It is silly to pretend that his act is the elemental force it was three decades ago, when Michael Billington, the Guardian’s theatre critic, described it as ‘a timed fiesta’, but it is still a wonder to behold. ‘I would now say it was a choreographed fiesta,’ says Billington, ‘organised down to the last detail, with minor adjustments. He can still take a conventional audience, and by the end of the evening make them feel as though they’ve been on a holiday. Liberated is the word.’

In Billington’s experience, the only comparable performer was Laurence Olivier. ‘Like Olivier, Dodd works in another dimension which takes you beyond the explicable, and that is a sign of genius. They create their own aura, and their own atmosphere. Dodd may play four nights a week but each show is an event, just as an Olivier night was different to all others.

‘An actor who appeared with him at Chichester in Uncle Vanya told me that every performance was called Holy Night. Olivier’s reputation was so high that people went into the theatre with expectations they didn’t have of other actors, no matter how good. I presume that Garland had it, and Maria Callas. Of those I have seen, Olivier and Dodd are the two. Olivier took you into realms of human experience unknown to others, and Dodd takes you to the very limits of comedy.’

Forty years after those famous Palladium shows, and three decades since he was a regular presence on television, a medium that cannot possibly contain him (‘It leads people by the nose to believe that everything must be crash, bang, wallop’), the Dodd experience has to be tasted live. The great comedians of the recent past — Eric Morecambe, Frankie Howerd, Les Dawson and Tommy Cooper — have gone, alas, which leaves Doddy batting for them all: the last remaining link with the music-hall.