Shades of Grey

Last night, I fulfilled a long standing desire, to go and see comedian Ken Dodd live. It wasn’t a burning ambition but over the years I had read much about him and how everyone should go and see him at least once.

I first saw him as a kid, filming for “Disney Time” at Scarborough. Disney Time was on every bank holiday on the Beeb and consisted of Disney clips generally anchored by a well known Brit entertainer of the day, out and about somewhere. Back in 1970, the only place you saw Disney movies was at the pictures, so the show was much looked forward to by children.

We went to Scarborough with the Boy’s Club to see an it’s a knock-out show at the huge open air arena which was unfortunately cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances but they did a fireworks show at dusk to compensate. There used to be a mini-zoo at the top of the hill and when we went up there Doddy was just finishing up filming. We shouted excitedly and he gave us a wave of acknowledgement, my first celebrity spotting. The other great draw in Scarborough was Peasholme Park and their delightful illuminations, model ship naval battle re-enactment and an organist playing on a floating island in the lake. Along with the Funiculars Scarborough was a great day out, second only to Blackpool. A gentler era indeed.

The next time Doddy came to my attention was when I was a Stage Lighting Salesman. I’d arranged to demonstrate a lighting desk to a Northern Theatre (from memory, it was probably Blackburn Mechanics) and all of the crew were late. It transpired that Ken Dodd had played two shows the previous evening and massively over-ran, the second audience were an hour late getting in because they just couldn’t get him off to finish the first show. The venues don’t let him appear twice nightly any more!

During the six years I worked in theatre lighting, his name came up several times on my travels. The crew always spoke well of him, what a trouper he was and what a great show he put on, but lamented how late a night it always ended up and how he didn’t know when to call it a day.

After yet another rave review in a sunday paper and the strong suggestion that at 79, we may never see the likes of him again, we decided to look into booking tickets. We couldn’t get in at Wakefield as it sold out really quickly but eventually a date came up at Ashton under Lyne and we arranged to get a Grandma to babysit. We also decided to book a nearby hotel as we didn’t want to drive all the way back home at some unearthly time in the morning. (The Website said something like:”starts at 7pm- will last a maximum of five hours”!)

The Tameside Hippodrome was built in 1904 as a three tier house but rebuilt in 1933 in classic cinema style. Indeed it still has the 50s ABC electroliers on the auditorium ceiling. It is great for films, not so intimate for live shows and the building decoration is rather coarsely applied. The lobbies and bar spaces are welcoming but the auditorium is rather bleak and the toilets inadequate. It did have a delightfully fringed pair of rich red drapes though, with a high level of fullness. It is run by Live Nation and was formerly run by Apollo, never renowned for over-investing in their venues. (Near our seats in the auditorium wall was an unexplained unmarked door with a large hasp padlock on, it looked rather nasty and makeshift for a public area with a poor attention to detail).

Whilst waiting for the show to start, we surveyed our fellow audience. Average age- about 60, with a few kids and quite a lot very older with walking sticks & crutches. There also seemed to be a few numptys who couldn’t understand the seating allocations and a few others who had brought packed lunches. (I didn’t see anyone with a thermos though!)

I got the impression that 90% of the audience had seen him before and came every year in organised trips. We bought a programme and a tickling stick from the merchandising table in the foyer, the latter supposedly for David. This low exposure shot (brightened up to be easier to see) shows Karen with the tickling stick. We stayed out of the bar, we didn’t fancy several hours without a toilet break and a full bladder.

The show commenced a couple of minutes after 7pm with a number of stage school kids performing christmas carols whilst a keyboard player and drummer bashed out the music. There was a backcloth but otherwise the stage was dressed only with fairly tatty looking blacks. It looked a bit amateurish and it was obvious that the children’s singing was a backing track. Both karen and I groaned inwardly; was it going to be a washout? We were wrong. Ken Dodd came on and had the audience in the palm of his hand for several hours. His is a style of humour from a gentler age- mother in laws and innuendo with his strongest swearword being “bloody”. I was expecting the style to be his zany “by jove missus!”persona but it was much more subtle than that. He was very self-deprecating and cajoled the audience constantly for not keeping up.

He did three (or was it four?) main sets and the two running gags were the Taxman (he famously was charged and then acquitted for tax evasion in the late 80s) and how long the show was going to be.

As we are going to spend the next seven and a half hours together I feel I ought to get to know you better…

At getting on for three hours in, he threatened us with cancelling the interval and locking the toilets if we didn’t laugh quicker. There was an interval called at 10pm and at 10:30pm we caught our second wind for an eventual curtain down at nearly quarter to one. The interval had to be a long one to let the toilet queues go down and it was noticeable that not everyone came back later (but most did). He is described as the patron saint of taxi drivers and you certainly get a lot of show time for your money.

What we hadn’t been expecting was that this was actually a variety show, not just a stand-up. There was also a lady singer/pianist (who was OK but not too memorable) and an Irish Flautist who was outstanding, also playing a clarinet and tin whistle. (His between-songs jokes let him down though).

The stage school kids appeared at various times during the show as music hall characters, guardsmen, comedians and diddy men (of course). He also brought on Dickie Mint, a ventriloquist’s dummy diddy man, as well as singing a fair bit. Here is a YouTube of Dickie Mint act from back in 1996:

Another couple of YouTubes to check out from the same video: Road to Morecambe Bay and Englishman,Irishman,Scotsman

Would I recommend him? Yes, everyone perhaps ought to try to see him once. You will laugh a lot, you might even find tears streaming down your face at times from the insanity of it all. There is a smattering of topical stuff and he cajoles the audience front row mercilessly, mostly remembering their names. He gets the venue town name into every third or fourth gag (it is amazing how many stories there are about people from Ashton & environs) and there will only be a couple of longer gags that you will have heard. (Even then, it is great to hear them told with impeccable timing). He didn’t obviously repeat himself but he didn’t finish a couple of gags along the way.

Frankly though, in my book, the variety format is too long-winded and not what people come to see. He could dispense with all of the frippery, just stick to himself and his musicians then do his bits with maybe two intervals, skim an hour off the show and be less tedious for those who come once and vow never again. I think we fall into that camp, glad to have done it but unlikely to repeat it. In the comedy olympics, he should just be aiming for the half-marathon.

Ken is 80 this coming Thursday and he has slowed down a bit, he only does one or two shows a week now and he was a little cautious bending down to pick up his tickling sticks. (The videos linked to have him as a spritely 68 years old)

Doddy is a stalwart defender of theatre heritage and always supports venues under threat. Indeed, his name is on the blue plaque outside the Tameside Hippodrome, snapped on the way out. He wrote the foreward to the original Curtains!!! theatres under threat gazetteer back in 1982 and admits that he loves to play the old venues best.

Catch him while you can, tour dates HERE.