How tickled we are that the beloved lord of joy Sir Ken Dodd Is getting its own Tattyfilarius exhibit, aptly titled Happiness! After their theme song. wild haired king Quick-Fire One Liner Kept TV and theater audiences captivated for decades. His deft tickle stick prop and imaginary sidekick Diddy Man made Dodie the nation’s darling. He continued performing to spread joy and laughter until a few months before his death in 2018 at the age of 90.
For decades, his wife Lady Anne devoted herself to Kane’s career – organizing shows, packing props and visiting theaters around the country. That devotion is intact. Now aged 80, Lady Anne still spends much of her time preserving memories of Ken, ensuring that the man who brought joy to millions continues to inspire new generations.
Surrounded by his vast book collection in the library of her home in Naughty Ash, Liverpool, she says: “It’s important to keep his legacy alive. I went into a bank about a year ago and was talking to a member of staff and I mentioned him. She said: ‘Ken who?’ He had never heard of him.
This made me upset, but then I thought ‘why should he know?’ She was 30 and he was 90 when she died. Sure, he was on television, but these days there are hundreds of channels to watch. Talking about Kane is cathartic. I miss his happiness and his humanity. He was very creative, very original.”
Lady Anne, Trustee of the Ken Dodd Charitable Foundation, has helped control the happiness! The Ken Dodd exhibition, which is at the Showtown Museum in Blackpool until January. It contains artifacts from Dodie’s seven-decade career, including tickle sticks, playbills, and costumes. It also explores his enduring love for the seaside town.
Lady Anne says: “Ken played Blackpool every year in his professional life. He loved the place – where the audiences were. He did season after season at the Opera House in the 60s – 3,000 people twice a night. Show business changed, it became lots of one-night shows. But Ken still called Blackpool Showtown – it’s where the museum got the idea for its name. She would have been tickled by it, but she was okay with this fuss. Would also be surprised about what he made of his life had he not had a big head.
Described as the last great music hall entertainer, Ken, the coal merchant’s son, began his career in the 50s. He was also a talented ventriloquist and singer. They sold over 100 million records with songs such as Happiness and Tears, the best-selling single of 1965 which topped the charts for five weeks. That year he was also in the Royal Variety Performance, which was also attended by the then Queen. He was knighted in 2017. Dodie became famous for long shows, sometimes more than five hours. Lady Anne says: “Ken called it giving people value for money. He loved hearing the audience laugh.”
The exhibition features the comedian’s notebooks. Each page contains blue-ink jottings, jokes and thoughts, collected from a lifetime of performances. He and the dancer Anne met in 1962, when she performed manchester Opera House, and became an item in 1978. They married in 2018, a few days before her death, in the same house where she was born, where Lady Anne still lives.
She says: “I find something new every time I open a book. There are about a thousand in all and if Ken didn’t have a notebook, he would 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 while to even understand them. I discovered that GOG was code for ‘good old lies’ – but these books make me smile and I’ll always remember Ken’s Something new is revealed about us.”
Ken’s ventriloquist dummy Dickie Mints, based on one of the famous Diddy Men, is also on display. With his red hat and wide eyes, Dickie was ‘very special’ to Ken and Lady Anne says she even considered burying him with the entertainer. “Dickie was the support that meant most to Ken. He was never left in the car if we stayed in a hotel. He was irreplaceable, you see – just like Ken.
“Before the funeral I was tempted to take Dickie with me; they belong together. I didn’t do that because I realized Dickie held so many memories for so many people.” Equally precious is a large portrait of Kane, which hangs in his office, which shows very different sides of the comedian, having played Malvolio in a production of Twelfth Night that received considerable critical acclaim.
“He called himself two people – the clown on stage and the private man off stage. Off stage, he thought very deeply about things, about humor, and read widely. And he always retained his curiosity about life to the end.
“We never argued, we watched the news and discussed it and he always listened attentively. I was never bored even for a moment.” Kane came into the limelight in 1989 when he was tried at Liverpool Crown Court on charges of tax evasion. His defense counsel was George Carman QC, who famously joked in court: “Some accountants are comedians, but comedians are never accountants”.
In her later book – The Squire of Naughty Ash and His Lady – Lady Anne says that Kane was “disorganized and at times perhaps inexperienced” in money matters, but not dishonest. After being acquitted of all charges, he later joked about his experience of the act.
He said: “I told the Inland Revenue I didn’t owe them a penny because I lived by the sea.” Kane appeared in over 320 theaters across the country, and logged thousands of miles driving with Lady Anne.
She says: “He didn’t crave money, he just loved what he did. However, I have to admit that when it was 1 a.m. and he was still signing autographs, I would get in the car, put the seat back and take a nap.” Kane left an estate worth several million pounds. Now, along with speaking engagements and the exhibition project, Lady Anne works almost full-time to help distribute funds to good causes through her foundation launched in 2013.
“He wanted to spread happiness and this is part of that. We’ve named places after him. There’s a Ken Dodd learning place in Showtown because I wanted to keep his name there.” She adds: “I want people to look at it in decades to come and if they wonder, ‘Who was that?’ Well, the answer can be summarized in three words. Britain’s greatest comedian.”
*Happiness! The Ken Dodd exhibition opens today (23 June) at Showtown Blackpool.
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