The news is out now, so I thought I should say a few words.
I have known Ken Dodd for nearly all of my life, and I am sorry to have to report that he passed away last night. Ken was a comic genius, a term that is frequently misused yet entirely applicable in his case. He lived and breathed his craft, and was actively performing almost continuously from his debut in the early 1950's until his sudden illness and decline of January of this year. He believed that his talent for making people laugh was a gift, and one to be shared, while a major name in the
UK he was never below playing small humble theatres in small towns as well as large ones, and both were almost always full.
While he was respected for his craft nationwide in Liverpool his status was legendary. Liverpool has had no shortage of famous names, but they would all if them left for sunnier or richer climes, Ken Dodd stayed and the people of Liverpool never forgot that. When a poll was cast for the greatest Liverpudlian, most outsiders thought John Lennon was an easy win, he was in fact a well deserved second place for this reason. He was the squire, and for eleven months the Knight of Knotty Ash, he always lived in an unpretentious working class terraced house - later extend it to encompass the two houses next door as they became available. He regularly attended the local church, and he lived alongside the people of his community, the same streets where he would sell coal in the 1940's from a horsecart with his dad.
Ken was one of the last, if not the last of the vaudeville performers, would sing and act as well as jest, though he would always be known for the short gag and one-liner. His comedy was never crude, he would never raise a cruel laugh at someone elses expense, and was not impressed that too many comedy acts made their name on exclusively and exactly that. Anyone can raise a laugh from shadenfreude, but only a real comic can tell a straight joke and get a laugh from it.
Ken did not just perform comedy, he studied it as a craftsman, there was a calculating mind behind his work, he would continually read his audience, and adapt his show and his impeccable timing to get his act to work. I remember my last visit to his home in Knotty Ash and seeing posters on the wall first showing Ken as second billing, then quickly top, from the early 1950's, with four digit telephone numbers for box offices to buy tickets in old shillings, and to think that he was still not only performing, but still running his performances from an eight o clock start until after midnight, with himself on stage for much of that time as recently as 2017. His shows always started on time, but never finished on time, in fact the length of his shows ran into his gags and his audience loved him for it, because they knew he believed in giving value for what he did. Ken was old school in his work ethic, people would travel and pay to see him, so let them see him, he would entertain them. Ken sincerely believed laughter was medicine, and not just in the form of a tagline. He made a living standing on a stage to meet people and cheer them up and brighten their lives a little, and took to it as a duty to do his job humbly and do it well.
The final curtain was never the end either. Ken Dodd's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery was very well chosen, it doesn't show Ken on stage or posing formally, it shows him backstage, just after a performance stripped out of his
stage clothes and with a pint of bitter while entertaining his guests. This was the real Ken, tired from his work yet always with more time to spend with those who were invited backstage or others who knew his roadies and were allowed to just popped in. He would talk while he unwound with his drink. The unseen audience of this portrait would often be major names in the entertainment industry who would sit before him very much like disciples before a guru. I witnessed this many a time and was privileged to be there myself, though I was just there as a friend. Ken would listen and Ken would speak, he was not a formally educated man, but he was a very experienced man, and had a very sharp mind. It was clear that he not just performed his trade, he
understood his trade, despite comedy not being something you can readily categorize and theorize on, and he was so insightful. And as for the roadies, most of them were pension age themselves, some had been working for Ken for forty years or more and knew me from when I was a first introduced to him as a child. They were as close as family and treated the same.
There was the third side to Ken, as a private man, forgive me if I say less on this. Even though he is gone, I will not speak of anything not fully in the public air, not because I have anything controversial to say, on this topic - I have not; but because none of those close to him would never talk about him to the media. All I have to say was that Ken was a gentle man, and a kind man and a solidly loyal friend, who commanded the deepest respect of anyone who knew him out of freely returned love. He had a private life, and he lived, and died in the house in which he was born. He married his long time partner Anne Jones in a secret ceremony last Friday at his home, which I could not disclose until it was announced he had done so alongside his passing. We reckoned then his was a bittersweet occasion and thus had some measure of warning, but will miss him deeply.
Goodnight Ken, I will see you on the other side.
