Product Description

This is the first complete biography of the last of the great British comedians, published to coincide with his 80th birthday in November 2007. A new generation of fans and comedians, including Johnny Vegas, Victoria Wood and Vic Reeves, are now rediscovering Dodd's unique talents. Dodd has a huge and fiercely loyal fanbase. On the eve of his eightieth birthday, Ken Dodd is still touring the country, performing in packed venues an average of two nights a week with his legendary four-hour sets. 'I do it because that is what I do. I do it because that is what I am,' he said, when asked why he continues with this punishing schedule. Ken Dodd's career has spanned over five decades as he went from singer to actor, and presently, most famously, comedian. He is considered the last, great, music-hall-inspired variety comic, but what drives this man whose career has been tainted by hardship? Dodd still lives in his childhood home of Knotty Ash and has never married, despite having two-long term fiances. In 1989, his strange relationship to money culminated in a trial for tax evasion, and he was also famously stalked by a mystery woman. How did this feather-duster salesman become one of the most loved, though least-lauded, British comedians of all time? Stephen Griffin interviewed friends, colleagues and fellow comedians to get inside the mind of the original Diddyman.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31734 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

Review
"'A reminder of Dodd's joyful brilliance' The Mail on Sunday"

About the Author
Stephen Griffin is a freelance journalist and former arts editor and TV reviewer at the Hampstead & Highgate Express newspaper.

Customer Reviews

Ken Dodd - A Biography (not The Biography)
This doesn't tell you much about Ken Dodd that couldn't be mostly gleaned from press cuttings and chatting to one or two people who know him. The definitive biography has yet to be written about this complex compulsive character who most people only know from his ebullient stage presence.
What of the real man and his less well-chronicled private side? That will have to wait for another day.

An Excellent Ticklemus Gift

I found this book so readable I was unable to put it down. It's extremely well researched, including personal interviews as well as press cuttings. I had no difficulty relating the person revealed in the book to the clown I once saw live on the stage.

Anyone looking for a different person than the one who reveals himself in his shows, or is described in this book, is pursuing a chimera. This is Ken Dodd, warts and all. Dodd himself gave up trying to analyse comedy after discovering that comedy is what makes people laugh. Amateur psychologists should do the same.

Dodd bought a house he never lived in because he prefers familiar things.
His was a life for living not for accounting. He never cared for details and he never cared to reveal his private thoughts. It's others, not Dodd himself, who suggested he never married because of parental influence - he never could get used to the idea of forming another family.

He still lives in the house where he was born, the table is still set the way his mother used to set it and the HP bottle is out as it always was. He's still the bloke from Knotty Ash, who still lives in Knotty Ash and will always live in Knotty Ash. No further explanation is required and there's no reason why Ken Dodd should be asked to provide one either.

And who can blame him given the way his private life was stripped away during his trial for tax evasion?. True to form Dodd turned disaster (he did have to pay a lot of back tax) into triumph with a lot of well received Revenue inspired material.

Griffin has got it right. Dodd has kept the old music hall tradition alive with a madcap routine which provides audiences with excellent value for money (I left his live show at 12.40 a.m. when he was still going strong having been there since 7.30.p.m)!!! An excellent read, well worth the money.

Solid professional writing - but no special insight
Whatever you think of Ken Dodd or whether you laugh at his jokes you can't say the guy is lazy. From a hard life of rejection as a door-to-door salesman to the hard life of the club circuit you feel that his smallish cash-in-hand fortune has been well earned. Behind the crooked smiles he is tough guy from a tough city.

But what drives him - what motivates him to carry on when the lure of the holiday home and the golf course has captured so many stars of yesteryear?

Don't read this book to find out - because it is a case of "your guess is as good as mine." Indeed does author (Stephen Griffen) even like Ken Dodd or chuckle at his work? Hard to tell, although authors in love with stars write the worst biographies - unless you are of the same mind.

The famous cash-in-the-attic court case and an unlikely infatuated fan give variety and colour to a life that hasn't changed much in decades. The same clothes, the same jokes, the same songs and - probably - the same audience.

This is a solid book written by a solid author who has read every clipping and rang every dog-eared number in his black book. However too often this reads like the school homework of a bright pupil in a subject that interests him (personally) very little. There simply isn't enough material for the recycled tree. Too many questions. Too few answers.

If you are a fan you are far better with one of his DVD's than this product.