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

Get him on his favourite performers and he will talk all night. Al Read: ‘Perhaps the greatest radio comedian. He was one of the first observational comics, the one who says “Have you noticed how ...?” Peter Kay is in that line.’ Robb Wilton: ‘One of the great drolls, a comic actor rather than a comedian, a pop philosopher, and the joke always rebounded on him.’ Max Miller: ‘The grand-daddy of all front-cloth comics, and he didn’t tell filthy gags, no matter what you may have heard. It was bawdy, yes, it could be spicy stuff, but you must remember there was a Watch Committee in every town. They used to sit in on a Monday, and if they didn’t like what they heard, there was no show.’

He is especially proud of the Liverpool comics. Ted Ray, Arthur Askey and Tommy Handley were his guiding stars, and further back there was Billy Bennett, ‘Almost a Gentleman’, whose monologues inspired the youthful Dodd’s flights of fancy. ‘He used to recite lines that began, “The sea was as smooth as a baby’s top lip, not even a policeman in sight.” Poetry, that.’

Neville Cardus said that Vladimir Horowitz was ‘the greatest pianist, living or dead’. Anybody who has witnessed the Squire of Knotty Ash in full flood is likely to feel the same way about this incomparable pleasure-giver. If you have neglected to catch the greatest performer in the long, glorious history of British comedy, then get a move on, because when the curtain falls for the last time our lives will be poorer. Best to take a thermos, though, and a few jam butties. ‘I wonder what they’ll say about me in a hundred years. When the bloody hell is he going to finish?’