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

And bat he does. He knows every comic that ever drew breath, every gag, and everything that has been said or written about his craft. ‘Aristotle thought that comedy was like a buckled mill wheel, something that wasn’t quite right. I think that comedy is a perception of incongruities, something slightly off-centre, but you wouldn’t believe how many comedians, some of the very best, have no sense of humour. It’s like having a nice car. You don’t necessarily need to know how to change the prop-shaft so long as you are driving the thing.’

Which is not to say that he is a theorist. Once, attending a conference in Cardiff, he was astounded to hear what the dry-as-dust academics were saying. ‘They spoke all afternoon about humour, and not one of them was funny. I told them I had 30 seconds, no more, to establish the trust of the audience. Gracie Fields called it a silver thread. Posh actors call it rrr-apport. I call it building a bridge. Laughter is the effect, humour the content, comedy the technique.’

If he doesn’t understand many of the modern so-called technicians, he cannot be alone. ‘Some of these people feel they have to use obscenities, but it doesn’t make the gag any funnier. It’s like a child running home from school and shouting ‘knickers’ to his mother. We all know swear words, but on stage they tend to introduce another emotion, which gets between the performer and the audience. It’s gratuitous. At the back of their minds people think, “Why did he have to say that?” I can’t understand some of these sour-faced malcontents who sneer all the time, because that is not true comedy. Many of them have not lived long enough to realise that while you have to have a degree of disbelief in life, you can’t go around decrying everybody and everything all the time: the Queen, the police, the law, what is called the Establishment, because life is better than that. It’s a form of mistaken drollery, I suppose. They think they’re being hip. But I like to celebrate life. People may come into the theatre with the blues but I’ve got to send them away feeling happy.’