How tickled we are that the beloved master of mirth Sir Ken Dodd is getting his own tattyfilarious exhibition, aptly titled Happiness! after his theme song. The wild-haired king of quick-fire one liners left TV and theatre audiences in stitches for decades. His daft tickling stick props and fictitious helpers the Diddy Men endeared Doddy to the nation. He kept performing to spread happiness and laughter until months before his death in 2018, aged 90.
For decades, his wife Lady Anne devoted herself to Ken’s career – organising shows, packing props and driving to theatres across the country. That devotion is undimmed. Now in her 80s, Lady Anne still spends much of her time preserving Ken’s memory, ensuring the man who brought joy to millions continues to inspire new generations.
Surrounded by his vast book collection in the library of the home they shared in Liverpool’s Knotty Ash, she says: “It’s important to keep his legacy alive. I went into a bank about a year ago and was chatting to a member of staff and I mentioned him. She said: ‘Ken who?’ She’d never heard of him.
It upset me, but then I thought ‘why should she know?’ She was in her 30s and he was 90 when he died. He’d been on television, of course, but there are hundreds of channels to watch these days. Talking about Ken is cathartic. I miss his joy and his humanity. He was so creative, so original.”
Lady Anne, a trustee of the Ken Dodd Charitable Foundation, has helped curate Happiness! The Ken Dodd Exhibition, which is at Blackpool’s Showtown Museum until January. It includes artefacts from Doddy’s seven decade career, including tickling sticks, playbills and costumes. It also explores his enduring love for the seaside town.
Lady Anne says: “Ken played Blackpool every year of his professional life. He adored the place – that was where the audiences were. He did season after season at the Opera House in the 60s – 3,000 people twice nightly. Showbusiness changed, it became a lot of one night shows. But Ken still called Blackpool showtown – it’s where the museum got the idea for its name. He’d be tickled by that, but he’d also wonder about the fuss being made of his life. He wasn’t a big head.”
The career of coal merchant’s son Ken, described as the last great music hall entertainer, began in the 50s. He was also a talented ventriloquist and singer. He sold more than 100 million records with songs such as Happiness and Tears, 1965’s biggest-selling single which topped the charts for five weeks. That year he was also at the Royal Variety Performance attended by the then Queen. He was knighted in 2017. Doddy became as well known for the lengthy shows, sometimes beyond five hours. Lady Anne says: “Ken called it giving people value for money. He adored hearing an audience laugh.”
The comedian’s notebooks are in the exhibition. Each page containing blue-inked jottings, jokes and ideas, collected over a lifetime of performing. He and dancer Anne met in 1962, when they performed at the Manchester Opera House, and became an item in 1978. They married just days before his death in 2018, at the home he was born in, where Lady Anne still lives.
She says: “I find something new every time I open one. There are about a thousand in all and if Ken didn’t have a notebook, he’d use the space around the edges of a newspaper to write. I never read them when he was alive – I was too busy. It took me a bit to decipher them, too. I worked out GOG was code for ‘good old gag’ – but these books make me smile and I always find out something new about Ken.”
Dicky Mint, Ken’s ventriloquist dummy, based on one of the famous Diddy Men, is also on display. With his red hat and wide eyes, Dicky was ‘very special’ to Ken and Lady Anne says she even considered burying him with the entertainer. “Dicky was the prop that meant the most to Ken. He was never left in the car if we were staying in a hotel. He was irreplaceable, you see – like Ken.
“I was tempted to put Dicky in with him before the funeral; they belong together. I didn’t because I realised Dicky contained so many memories for so many people.” Equally precious is a large portrait of Ken, hanging in her office, which captures the very different sides of the comedian, who a played Malvolio in a production of Twelfth Night to huge critical acclaim.
“He called himself two people – the jester on stage and the private man off it. Off stage, he thought very deeply about things, about humour, and read widely. And he always retained his curiosity about life to the end.
“We never argued, we’d watch the news and discuss it and he always listened carefully. I was never bored for one moment.” Ken hit the headlines in 1989, when he was tried at Liverpool crown court for tax evasion. His defence counsel George Carman QC, who famously joked to the court: “Some accountants are comedians, but comedians are never accountants”.
In her later book – The Squire of Knotty Ash and his Lady – Lady Anne says Ken had been “disorganised and perhaps naive at times” about money matters, but not dishonest. Acquitted of all charges, he later joked about the experience in his act.
He would say: “I told the Inland Revenue I didn’t owe them a penny because I lived near the seaside.” Ken appeared in more than 320 theatres across the country, clocking up thousands of miles behind the wheel, with Lady Anne navigating.
She says: “He didn’t crave the trappings of wealth, he just loved what he did. I must admit, though, that when it got to 1am and he was still signing autographs, I’d get in the car, put the seat back and have a snooze.” Ken left a multi-million pound estate. Now, together with speaking engagements and the exhibition project, Lady Anne works almost full time helping distribute the money to good causes via his foundation, begun in 2013.
“He wanted to spread happiness and this is part of that. We’ve named places after him. There is a Ken Dodd learning space at Showtown, because I want to keep his name out there.” She adds: “I want people to see it in decades to come and if they wonder ‘who was that?’ Well, the answer can be summed up in three words. Britain’s greatest comedian.”
*Happiness! The Ken Dodd Exhibition opens today (June 23) at Showtown Blackpool.
