Saturday Rave: Ken Dodd's jokes.

You probably won't have heard of Ken Dodd, who's died recently aged ninety.

He was a mad-looking scarecrow of a man:


photo by DAVID A ELLIS

He had a good singing voice, as it happened, but he was famous as a comedian.

He used to appear on TV, long ago, but it was in a theatre that he was happiest. That's why, unless you've visited a British theatre, you won't have heard of him. His stand-up sets would routinely last for hours, until his audience were so weak with laughter they couldn't have walked out even if they wanted to.

It's no good going home, he'd tell them. I'll come and shout jokes through your letterbox.

And his act was mostly jokes. Thousands upon thousands of them. 

It's a privilege to be asked to play here tonight on what is a very special anniversary. It is a hundred years to the night since that balcony collapsed.

He got into serious trouble for tax evasion at one point, and he even told jokes about that.

I told the Inland Revenue I don't owe them a penny. I live by the seaside.

But mostly he skated around the edge of a sort of bright madness, a slightly horrifying joviality.

The man who invented Cat's 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.

I don't know if his humour travels beyond the shores of Great Britan. I don't think he would have cared all that much. He died in the house in which he was born, having spent a lifetime coaxing theatres into warm bowls of helpless laughter.

What a lovely day for walking up to a sea gull, chucking a bucket of whitewash over it, and saying how do you like it?

I'm not sure anyone can ask more of anyone than that.

Word To Use Today: joke. This word didn't exist in English until the 1600s. It comes from the Latin jocus.