He marched on stage wearing a big moulting raccoon-skin coat, with buttons the size of dinner plates. On his head was a tropical pith helmet. He waved a Union Jack and sang bursts of ‘On the Road to Mandalay!’ composed by Rudyard Kipling in 1892.
He then shouted to the eager audience: ‘Stand up for yourselves! Let them know you’re British!’ With masterly timing he added: ‘Play on their sympathies…’
Sir Ken Dodd, who died on Sunday aged 90, was the last of the great music hall comedians. When I saw him in full flight last year in Wimbledon, his act was defiantly anachronistic, enshrining a Blitz atmosphere, as if Hitler’s bombs were falling outside, or the Kaiser was still menacing our boys at the Front.
Sir Ken Dodd, who died on Sunday aged 90, was the last of the great music hall comedians
‘What a beautiful day,’ he said, ‘for going up to Count Zeppelin and saying: “You’ll never sell a sausage that size”.’
Doddy told archaic jokes about dumb blondes, nagging wives, cheating husbands, stockings, vests, long-johns, mean northerners, tin baths, girdles, soot and defunct TV programmes — though he seemed unaware they were defunct. He often mentioned his tax trial, which took place in 1989.
There were prolonged community singalongs, as if we were cheering ourselves up in an air raid shelter or hiding from the Boers.
There was a slightly queasy and surrealist story about his being a sexual reject, where Doddy said: ‘I shave one of my legs, ladies and gentlemen, so that in the dark I can caress it and pretend I am in bed with a woman.’
Ken’s first partner, Anita Boutin, was with him for 24 years until her death at 45 in 1977 from a brain tumour. The couple had been engaged for almost their entire relationship. She’d told one reporter when asked when they might wed: ‘It’s up to Ken.’
Altogether, seeing Ken Dodd live was to rediscover post-war music hall England where the strongest oath was ‘By Jove!’
Doddy was slightly more camp in the flesh than I’d expected, like a pantomime dame with elongated bony, expressive fingers and cart-wheeling arms.
His rainbow make-up was unabashedly for the sulphur flare of 19th-century footlights, the rouge, the mascara and the purple lips.
For all that, he always went on and on about ‘happiness’ and a need to elicit ‘cascading cacophonies of chuckles, great gurgling guffaws’, Doddy’s waxen face registered pain and bewilderment better than positivity.
Indeed, when he pulled a funny face, making a meal of his jutting fangs, zany hair and staring eyes, he was a scary gargoyle, like a creature who’d fallen off a cathedral.
Doddy possessed none of the rasping, hectoring, excitable quality common to stand-ups. None of their modern-day crudity. He did, though, have the great actor’s gimlet eye, which missed nothing (Pictured: Ken performing in the Oak Tree in Huyon, Liverpool. Picture taken circa 1st March 1946)
Entertainer George Melly, who once witnessed Doddy singing Sonny Boy to a ventriloquist’s doll famously named Dickie Mint, was similarly disconcerted, and thought Doddy was something of a ventriloquist’s doll himself: ‘You get him out of the box, push him on stage and he’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant’ — but not exactly recognisably human.
This is because Doddy was much more than a comedian. What he was doing was Performance Art.
I was transfixed as the jokes fell like leaves, one after the other — ‘Love is like a set of bagpipes. You don’t know what to do with your hands’; ‘I wanted to take my dog to obedience class, but he wouldn’t go’ — and the audience laughter ebbed and flowed in great gusts.
‘Fellas, why don’t you go home tonight, grab a handful of ice, throw it down the missus’s top, and say: “How about that for a new chest freezer?”’
That these were terrible jokes was paradoxically part of the fun, like Tommy Cooper’s magic tricks going wrong. Though bouncy and eccentric, trying hard to incite laughter as a reflex, Doddy in his delivery had a dryness as well as considerable nuance.
It is one thing to have had a happy childhood, as Doddy did by all accounts, but quite another never to be able to leave most of it behind (Ken Dodd pictured with The Beatles)
His state of being was one of surprising sweetness — enabling him to get away with a line like this: ‘My life has been a series of tragedies, ladies and gentlemen, culminating in tonight.’
Doddy possessed none of the rasping, hectoring, excitable quality common to stand-ups. None of their modern-day crudity. He did, though, have the great actor’s gimlet eye, which missed nothing. It was as if he was fully capable of noticing and reacting to each and every audience member individually — to see if they were paying attention or fidgeting or sneaking to the toilets. He addressed patrons in the stalls (‘yes, you, missus’) like Dame Edna purring at her ‘possums’.
He mumbled and coughed now and again, and seemed susceptible to pollen and dust.
It was as if he was fully capable of noticing and reacting to each and every audience member individually — to see if they were paying attention or fidgeting or sneaking to the toilets
Yet it was hard to know if this was genuine frailty as he was in his tenth decade, or whether it was all an ingenious way of helping win us over, to create the necessary intimacy, the bond between artiste and audience — because the show still lasted five hours. ‘This isn’t television, missus,’ he warned at one point. ‘You can’t turn me off.’
Kenneth Arthur Dodd was born on November 8, 1927, in Knotty Ash, Liverpool. He remained in the double-fronted family home all his life, the furniture and table-settings still arranged as his late mother had left them. Knotty Ash is where he died.
It is one thing to have had a happy childhood, as Doddy did by all accounts, but quite another never to be able to leave most of it behind. And you hardly need to be a psychologist to detect here the origins of Doddy’s comic style, banging a drum, wearing silly hats, making a noise — he was the clown as grown-up baby.
His state of being was one of surprising sweetness — enabling him to get away with a line like this: ‘My life has been a series of tragedies, ladies and gentlemen, culminating in tonight.’
His father was a coal merchant, who in his spare time played the saxophone, clarinet and double bass. He took his son to the cinema and theatre regularly — and the future entertainer remembered of the stars he saw that ‘those people looked so happy and healthy. That’s the job for me’.
Doddy was given a set of puppets, read leaflets on ventriloquism and began showing off in church halls at amateur dramatics and concert parties.
He left Holt Grammar School at 14 to help his father deliver coal around Merseyside — persuading, cajoling, selling things to the public — and at the weekend dressed up and billed himself as Professor Yaffle Chucklebutty, Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter, telling corny gags, indulging in goonish word-play (tattyfilarious, plumptious), and generally drawing attention to his goofy appearance, in order to amuse wounded soldiers at military hospitals.
Kenneth Arthur Dodd was born on November 8, 1927, in Knotty Ash, Liverpool. He remained in the double-fronted family home all his life, the furniture and table-settings still arranged as his late mother had left them
The coal — ‘sex is what posh people have their coal delivered in’ — was first taken to Knotty Ash, and some say it accounted for that asthmatic cough of his.
Doddy and his brother would then deliver it by horse and cart, says BBC Sports presenter Garry Richardson, who made a documentary about his hero and was the last person to interview him.
‘Ken reminisced about how they went to Wrexham horse sales one day and bought “a wonderful horse called Duke”, and that’s how they travelled the streets of Liverpool,’ says Richardson.
‘After 12 years, Ken bought a Luton van and started work as a door-to-door salesman selling buckets, pans, polish, soap powder. He told me that’s where his rapport with audiences began.
‘He said: “I would knock on the door and say: ‘Good morning madam’.” The rest is history.’
Years later, Doddy reflected that ‘to make people laugh and bring some cheerfulness into the lives of so many people has been a very great privilege’. He was a true jester, his tickling stick his equivalent of the Fool’s pig’s bladder.
His father was a coal merchant, who in his spare time played the saxophone, clarinet and double bass. He took his son to the cinema and theatre regularly
He made his professional debut at the Nottingham Empire in 1954 and was soon booked for summer seasons in Blackpool. Only in Glasgow was he heckled. ‘What a horrible sight!’ someone yelled.
Doddy had his own television series by 1959, and he was to remain a popular turn on The Good Old Days, where audiences dressed up in Victorian costume.
To win a family audience, he was frequently accompanied by puppets or child actors portraying The Diddy Men, lurid midgets who worked down the Jam Butty Mines, in the Snuff Quarry or in the Broken Biscuit Repair Works.
The Guinness Book of Records reckoned Doddy could tell 1,500 jokes in three hours, and Doddy’s rationale was ‘I try to give value for money’
In 1965, Doddy packed the London Palladium for 42 consecutive weeks. Doddy’s Here! netted him £126,000. John Osborne, the playwright creator of failing music-hall performer Archie Rice in The Entertainer, took the entire Royal Court Theatre Company ‘to see a real comic artist at work’.
By 1970, Doddy was earning £10,000 a week for his appearances. In 1982, his income was £1,154,566.
He also had a concurrent career as a singer of lachrymose romantic ballads, and Doddy’s records sold millions. ‘Happiness’, ‘Tears’, and ‘Promises’ were dislodged from the charts only by the advent of The Rolling Stones.
By 1970, Doddy was earning £10,000 a week for his appearances. In 1982, his income was £1,154,566
Money was very important to him, a symbol or indication of what he called ‘a colossal desire to be loved’, as measured by applause and tickets sold. Doddy hoarded his wealth — never spent any of it. Financial worth came to be a reflection of self-worth.
By 1986, there were 20 offshore bank accounts in places such as the Isle of Man and Jersey, holding £777,453. But most of his loot was kept in used notes and bags of coins stashed in the attic, under the stairs and in the wardrobes in Knotty Ash. There was £300,000 in a shoe box.
When the Inland Revenue prosecuted him for unpaid tax on the interest these nest eggs should have accrued, Doddy said he didn’t owe them a penny because ‘I live near the seaside’.
Though he was found not guilty after a four-week trial, he was left with legal costs of £2 million, and the details that emerged, when he was grilled by prosecutor Brian Leveson — the lawyer behind the Leveson Inquiry — were peculiar.
Money was very important to him, a symbol or indication of what he called ‘a colossal desire to be loved’, as measured by applause and tickets sold
Doddy’s frugality, for example, would have impressed Ebenezer Scrooge, as since 1949 his total expenditure on all outgoings — i.e. across 40 years — was reported as £23,000. His annual disbursement on wine and meals out was approximately £50. The first time he went on holiday was when he was 51. Doddy’s counsel, George Carman, bewilderingly argued that his client hid money under the floorboards because ‘he feared Britain was on the brink of a civil war’.
But the truth is more that Doddy had an entertainer’s acquisitive ego — he was tenacious and obstinate (what was his was his. He did not like sharing or being told what to do). And if he was a genius at asserting his will over an audience, keeping us locked in for hours, this is because, in all areas of his life and work, he needed to have perfect control, complete manipulative power. Doddy’s ability to charm his audience wasn’t infallible. When a woman told him she was a cleaner, and he quipped, ‘Oh, so you’re a scrubber?’ she reached into her shopping bag, pulled out a leg of lamb and hit him over the head with it. ‘And that’s my tickling stick!’ she said.
Perhaps it was to avoid moments like this that Doddy — who had two long-term fiancees in his life — didn’t marry until the very end. On Friday, on his deathbed in Knotty Ash, he quietly wed his partner of 40 years, Anne Jones, a former Bluebell dancer.
I can’t begin to imagine Doddy as an ensemble player. As he told Clare: ‘I was always trying to become a name. I was always trying to get to the top of the bill. I always wanted to be a star. I love being a star. I love being Ken Dodd.’
Some years ago, he told the psychiatrist Anthony Clare that he ‘didn’t have time to get married’, and a shocked Clare replied: ‘In your list of priorities it wasn’t high enough, because you would do it if you wanted to do it.’
Ken’s first partner, Anita Boutin, was with him for 24 years until her death at 45 in 1977 from a brain tumour. The couple had been engaged for almost their entire relationship. She’d told one reporter when asked when they might wed: ‘It’s up to Ken.’
Anita was buried at the local church in Knotty Ash — where Ken’s mother had been laid to rest eight years previously — and each Christmas Day he would place flowers on both their graves.
It’s hard to imagine a sadder image of the great clown, who in backstage photographs could often appear melancholy and reflective, a milk-white ghost. He once said morosely: ‘I had no children. I had no Rolls-Royce. I had no villa in Spain.’ But much of this was his own choice.
He kept touring until the very end, up and down the country — Bridlington, Cannock, Frome, Whitley Bay — filling theatres and floral halls on Sunday afternoons, keeping the audience there until Monday morning
Kenneth Branagh observed that Doddy ‘can suggest ticklish delight and black despair’, and cast him as Yorick in a production of Hamlet, where the character — normally simply a skull unearthed by gravediggers — appeared in a flashback. Doddy also played Malvolio, the tragically pompous buffoon in Twelfth Night, at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1971.
The late comic actor Ken Campbell, only semi-tongue-in-cheek, believed Doddy should have been invited to join the National Theatre. He’d not have been averse to this, and relished the thought of ‘the fear and the discipline of being a real actor in a team’.
But would he really have fitted into a team? I hardly think so. I can’t begin to imagine Doddy as an ensemble player. As he told Clare: ‘I was always trying to become a name. I was always trying to get to the top of the bill. I always wanted to be a star. I love being a star. I love being Ken Dodd.’
Some years ago, he told the psychiatrist Anthony Clare that he ‘didn’t have time to get married’, and a shocked Clare replied: ‘In your list of priorities it wasn’t high enough, because you would do it if you wanted to do it.’
So we can see why he’d have been averse to marriage, why all his professional life Doddy avoided what he believed were the traps and impositions of family life.
It would have meant a loss of control — he’d have had to share something of himself.
Meanwhile, Anne Jones followed him everywhere. While the great man held everyone captive on stage, Anne would set up a little stall in the foyer and sell the Doddy memorabilia, the Diddymen hats and tickling sticks. I myself bought an inscribed copy of Doddy’s memoir, Look At It My Way, from Anne’s stall in the theatre in Wimbledon.
It is as a unique vaudeville phenomenon spewing forth jokes that Doddy will be remembered. When a critic tried to be clever and compared Doddy’s whimsy with P.G. Wodehouse, the comic retorted: ‘Wodehouse should try playing the Golden Garter Club in Wythenshawe on a Saturday night’.
The Guinness Book of Records reckoned Doddy could tell 1,500 jokes in three hours, and Doddy’s rationale was ‘I try to give value for money’.
He kept touring until the very end, up and down the country — Bridlington, Cannock, Frome, Whitley Bay — filling theatres and floral halls on Sunday afternoons, keeping the audience there until Monday morning. ‘You think you can get away, but you can’t. I’ll follow you home and shout jokes through the letterbox.’
No one doubted the threat was real. When I saw him live, I’d never felt quite so transported back in time. The support act was a George Formby impersonator, which helped intensify the Forties mood. ‘We’ve been walking him around the theatre to sober him up,’ said Doddy generously. ‘Give him a big hand.’
Doddy then glanced at the auditorium and said it reminded him of an outpatients’ department and a geriatric ward. ‘Under your seats you’ll find a Will Form.’
Hours later he still wouldn’t relent and, like a benign dictator, he exacted his control over us. ‘Do you give in?’ he entreated at last. And by then, of course we did.
‘I haven’t spoken to my mother-in-law for 18 months. I don’t like to interrupt her’: Ken Dodd’s best jokes in one tattyfilarious collection
Fifty-five years in showbusiness, ladies and gentlemen. That’s a hell of a long time to wait for a laugh.
My Dad knew I was going to be a comedian. When I was a baby he said: ‘Is this a joke?’
Did you hear about the shrimp that went to the prawn’s cocktail party? He pulled a mussel.
She was a big girl — she could stir fry a leg of lamb. She tried the ‘speak your weight’ machine. It said: ‘To be continued.’
So it turns out that if you bang two halves of a horse together, it doesn’t make the sound of a coconut.
Do I believe in safe sex? Of course I do. I have a handrail around the bed.
Honolulu’s got everything. Sand for the children, sun for the wife, sharks for the wife’s mother.
I haven’t spoken to my mother-in-law for 18 months. I don’t like to interrupt her.
The man who invented cats’ eyes got the idea when he saw the eyes of a cat in his headlights. If the cat had been going the other way, he would have invented the pencil sharpener.
She was a big girl — she could stir fry a leg of lamb. She tried the ‘speak your weight’ machine. It said: ‘To be continued.’
I used to think I was marvellous in bed until I discovered that all my girlfriends suffered from asthma.
So this fellow tells the doctor: ‘Every time I sneeze I feel very sexy.’ The doctor asks: ‘What do you take?’ ‘Pepper.’
In the 1800s, one of the MPs in London decided to introduce tax. In those days it was 2p in the pound. I thought it still was.
My act is very educational. I heard a man leaving the other night saying: ‘Well, that taught me a lesson.’
How do you make a blonde laugh on a Sunday? Tell her a joke on a Wednesday.
Just read a book about Stockholm Syndrome. It started off badly but by the end I really liked it.
Be honest girls, is this the first time you’ve seen a Chippendale?
My teeth are all my own. I just finished paying for them.
In the 1800s, one of the MPs in London decided to introduce tax. In those days it was 2p in the pound. I thought it still was.
Age doesn’t matter, unless you are a cheese.
It’s ten years since I went out of my mind. I’d never go back.
Tonight when you get home, put a handful of ice cubes down your wife’s nightie and say: ‘There’s the chest freezer you always wanted.’
An official went to ask my big Auntie Nellie to come off the beach because the tide was waiting to come in.
I’ve done some brave things in my time. I played Nottingham Labour Club. I was the one who shouted: ‘Three cheers for Mrs Thatcher.’ And it was during the bingo.
I wouldn’t part with my teeth. I’m the only patient who can sit in the dentist’s waiting room and have his teeth checked at the surgery.
How many men does it take to change a toilet roll? Nobody knows — it’s never been done before.
[Addressing people in The Gods at a provincial theatre] It’s a privilege to be asked to play here tonight on what is a very special anniversary. It is 100 years to the night since that balcony collapsed.
Men’s legs have a terribly lonely life — standing in the dark in your trousers all day.
We have a Frenchman that makes his own gravy — the Count of Monte Bisto.
I told the Inland Revenue I didn’t owe them a penny because I lived near the seaside.
I’ve done some brave things in my time. I played Nottingham Labour Club. I was the one who shouted: ‘Three cheers for Mrs Thatcher.’ And it was during the bingo.
The trouble with Freud is that he never played the Glasgow Empire on a Saturday night after Rangers and Celtic had both lost.
Doctor, ‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m approaching 50.’ ‘From which direction?’
The question I am frequently asked is how can I make a small tin of rice pudding last longer? Well, use a smaller spoon.
In some parts of the world people eat little bent pieces of wire for breakfast — it’s their staple diet.
What is deja vu? Haven’t I already answered that?
Did you know that Les Miserables was a Frenchman with no sense of humour?
Did you know that Handel donated all his organs to medical science? Mind you, he wouldn’t let them have his piano.
Scientists and doctors — they’re making tremendous strides all the time. One of these days you could have another mouth on top of your head. When you’re late for work in the morning, stick a bacon sandwich under your cap and eat it on your way to the bus.
I went into a shop last Saturday to buy a lottery ticket. And there was a gorgeous girl behind the counter. She said, ‘Next week it’ll be rollover week.’ I said, ‘Will it? That’s better than winning ten quid.’
I do gigs or ‘one night stands’. One night is all they can stand.
[On his famously long shows] Let me tell you it gets stressful. You’re under stress. I’m under stress. I don’t know what I’m under stress for. I’m the only one who knows what time it’s going to finish tonight . . . but I don’t want to depress you.
I’m an optimist. No, an optimist, love. Nothing to do with your eyes.
The other night in our house in Knotty Ash the phone rang. I picked up the phone, he said: ‘Hello Ken, it’s Chris Tarrant here, ITV’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Ken, we have David Beckham here and his wife Victoria and with your help we can get them up to £100.’
This audience tonight represents the crème de la crème — that’s French for ‘evaporated milk’.
This is going to be a long, long show. By the time you get out of here tonight Peter Mandelson will have paid his mortgage off.
Eve said to Adam: ‘Do you love me?’ And he replied: ‘Well who else is there?’
I went outside the house and there was this man with his head sticking out the pavement. I said: ‘Are you from the gas board?’ He said: ‘No, my parachute didn’t open.’
The Millennium Dome: the world’s biggest wok . . . It looks like John Prescott lying down.
Blackpool: where everyone is so friendly. Even the tram drivers give you a cheery wave as they knock the legs from under you.
The Romans built our roads. They’re still working on the M6.
Over 285 bones in the human body, enough to last the average dog a fortnight.
Scientists and doctors — they’re making tremendous strides all the time. One of these days you could have another mouth on top of your head. When you’re late for work in the morning, stick a bacon sandwich under your cap and eat it on your way to the bus.
Dogs have a very very highly developed sense of smell. You wouldn’t think so from some of the things they sniff but they do.
As the Irishman said when he saw his X-ray: ‘I don’t remember eating all those bones.’
Aromatherapy’s all about different aromatic oils. Rosemary’s good for a headache. Well, she always had one when I tried it. Castor oil’s very good for athletics. Have a bottle of that and you don’t need starting blocks.
This lady stopped me the other day. She said, ‘Hello handsome, can you tell me the way to the optician’s?’
Oh and here’s a police message ‘Will all those people who took the M6 motorway please put it back because other people want to use it.’
A blonde goes to the hairdresser on a Saturday morning. She has earphones on, listening to the pop music. She says to the hairdresser just go round them. So he tries but eventually he takes them off and bang, she falls unconscious onto the dressing table. He picks the earphones up: ‘Breathe in. Breathe out.’
Blackpool: where everyone is so friendly. Even the tram drivers give you a cheery wave as they knock the legs from under you.
How does a hen know the size of an egg cup when it lays an egg?
I’ve never wronged an onion so why do they make me cry?
Our farmers, working hard to grow fresh British food. Better than that frozen stuff from Iceland.
How do you make a blonde’s eyes light up? Shine a torch in her earhole.
A blonde goes to the hairdresser on a Saturday morning. She has earphones on, listening to the pop music. She says to the hairdresser just go round them. So he tries but eventually he takes them off and bang, she falls unconscious onto the dressing table. He picks the earphones up: ‘Breathe in. Breathe out.’
What’s black and blue and lies in the gutter? A comedian telling blonde jokes.
How honoured I am to be here tonight, ladies and gentlemen. There wasn’t much on the telly.
All these videos about vampires and werewolves. Fancy anybody paying good money to watch someone with long hair and big teeth.
Self-assessment. I invented that.
Trouble, you don’t know what trouble is. This morning I rang up the Samaritans. I said: ‘Hello. My name’s Ken Dodd.’ The fella at the other end shot himself.
The crew here, they put me in number one dressing room. You can’t get lower than one. It was a nice dressing room though, they even put fresh straw in.
We don’t have bidets in my home. We just stand upside down in the shower.
There are some very dodgy questions on these forms. Sex? I put, ‘Well, occasionally’.
Nobody wanted me, my mother had to tie a pork chop round my neck to get the dog to play with me. When we played doctors and nurses, I was the ambulance driver.
Trouble, you don’t know what trouble is. This morning I rang up the Samaritans. I said: ‘Hello. My name’s Ken Dodd.’ The fella at the other end shot himself.
I’ve just seen a car wearing a Red Nose . . . And an Irishman breathalysing it.
A laugh is a noise that comes out of your face — anywhere else and you’re in big trouble.
Do you like science fiction, sir?
Well you look like you’ve just landed.
There was Smeaton, who invented the Eddystone lighthouse. The first man to have a quick flash in public and get away with it.
The Pennines are the backbone of England. So what does that leave London?
Ladies and gentlemen I’ve been looking forward to this all day. That just shows you the sort of life I live.
Five o’clock in Knotty Ash this morning, I flung the bedroom windows open and climbed in.
What a beautiful day for dashing out to Trafalgar Square, chucking a bucket of whitewash over the pigeons and saying, ‘There you are, how do you like it?’
I can kiss a girl and nibble her ear at the same time.
On Wednesday I got six numbers in a row. It was on the gas bill but that’s a start.
I was going to take the dog to an obedience class but it wouldn’t go.
On Friday morning there was a tap on the door. He’s got a funny sense of humour that plumber.
I think all newspapers should have a happiness page… On a Monday morning you could start the week with a laugh. You could see the headline: ‘Inland Revenue officials swallowed by boa constrictor’.
The Pennines are the backbone of England. So what does that leave London?
I don’t do much television these days Why? Because I can’t cook.
Where’s a chicken’s nuggets?
A few years ago I used to be a sexagenarian. I loved it. I used to do home visits.
I come from a very old military family. My great-grandfather had a lot to do with the relief of Ladysmith. As a matter of fact she invited him back the following night.
Always be nice to your kids because they’re the ones who’ll decide which home you’re going in.
A little old lady went to the doctor and said: ‘Can I have some more sleeping pills for my husband?’ He said: ‘Why?’ She said: ‘He woke up.’
I do a lot of satire. That’s why I have this big stool.
I come from a very old military family. My great-grandfather had a lot to do with the relief of Ladysmith. As a matter of fact she invited him back the following night.
In Germany all the hims are Herrs.
Here they have a Butlins-trained chef. He’s what they call a ‘cordon-bluergh’.
Hello Mrs. Is this your husband with you or is it novelty night?
It’s a posh audience here tonight. There are people in the front row eating chips with their gloves on.
According to council regulations, this room can be cleared in three minutes. I’m here to prove it.
We have one enemy tonight, Ladies and Gentlemen. Time. And I’m going to fight it.
It’s a long show here tonight. If you look under your seats you’ll find a will form.
I’m a sex symbol for women who don’t care.
Monday morning, I woke up and there was this beautiful blonde suntanned girl lying alongside me. I said: ‘Have you been here all night?’ she said: ‘Shut up and finish your dream.’
1066, Hastings, King Harold sitting proudly on his white horse with an arrow stuck in his eye and all his courtiers around him saying: ‘Keep blinking, H, it’ll work its way out.’
The vicar said to me last Sunday: ‘Kenneth, isn’t it wonderful to see the young people walking down the road carrying the good book?’ I said, ‘They’re taking their videos back.’
People say: ‘How long does you tour last?’ I say: ‘What time can you be here?’
How am I coping with the credit crunch? I thought it was a chocolate bar.
For a man of 103, I feel marvellous.
I stand here today full of Bulldog spirit and with teeth to match.
This morning the BBC sent a car for me. Luckily it missed.
Euphemisms. These are words people use to cover up. For instance, ‘a molecular reaction has restructured an urban environment in a new concept’. That means ‘an atom bomb has just dropped on Wigan’.
Have you ever been in a Jacuzzi? With the water swirling away? You don’t know whether to enjoy it or apologise.
No wonder those French folks are so frisky — have you seen those long loaves they eat?
Five out of every three people have trouble understanding fractions.
Tonight we’re going to be asking mind-boggling questions. Like ‘where do flies go in the wintertime?’ And ‘what are the tailors going to do about it?’
They say an elephant never forgets. But I’ve never had a birthday card from one of them.
Votes for women! Squirting a hosepipe up Emmeline Pankhurst! How’s that for a suffering jet!
In the club I was in last night in Scunthorpe they kept a pig on the counter as an air freshener.
Euphemisms. These are words people use to cover up. For instance, ‘a molecular reaction has restructured an urban environment in a new concept’. That means ‘an atom bomb has just dropped on Wigan’.
I was a very small child. My mother used to carry me around in a handbag. I thought her ballpoint pen was my brother.
What’s green, eight-foot long, has great legs and, if it fell out of a tree, would kill you? A snooker table.
What’s red and hard and bad for your teeth? A brick.
What do you call a lady with one leg longer than the other? Eileen.
A big ship ran aground in Abbeyview harbour. It was a big ship loaded with a cargo of red and blue paint. All the crew were marooned.
It’s very nice to be here. But at my age, it is very nice to be anywhere.