I was lucky enough to see Ken Dodd a few years before he died. He played the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in 2012, came on around 7pm and sure enough finished around midnight. He was well into his eighties by then but on fine form, even if he was doing gags he'd probably been doing for years: "Smokeless fuel factory burnt down - no one noticed". At one point someone brought on a flask and sandwiches and Dodd asked the audience if they had brought theirs.
The flask and sandwiches gag cropped up in a clip in this extensive TV study of Dodd's life. His wife Anne revealed a veritable treasure trove of Doddy memorabilia, from scripts and oddball musical instruments to Diddyman costumes. In one truly surreal clip we saw brightly coloured Diddymen lining the road on the day of Dodd's funeral in 2018.
But most of all we see Dodd's notes. Bob Monkhouse is usually cited as the comedian most obsessed with getting everything down on paper, but judging by the evidence here Doddy outdid him, recording every gag in every town and how well it went with the aim of creating the ultimate 'giggle map'. Dodd wanted his books destroyed after his death. Thankfully Lady Anne resisted incinerating this part of showbusiness history.
Don't tune in expecting to get much in the way of psychology or deep-rooted motivatation. Apart from the fact that he clearly had his professorial side, all Dodd wanted was to spread plenty of happiness. And in that he certainly succeeded, as fans from Harry Hill to Tim Vine, Sir Ian McKellen, Shaparak Khorsandi and the late Paul O'Grady confirm. And most of all he wanted to do it onstage. He had plenty of success onscreen but eventually tired of TV's restrictions and went back on the road.
The doc, narrated by his friend Miriam Margolyes doesn't dig quite as deeply as one would have liked. Though there is much to savour here. It is suggested that he was in the ultimate double act – Dodd and the audince. He simply loved laughter - "the sound you make through a hole in your face" – and he never wanted to stop hearing it, which maybe explains why he was touring, touring, touring his very own giggle map almost right up to his death at the age of 90.
Available now on iPlayer here.
Picture: BBC/Heart & Soul Films Ltd/Ron Davies
