Ken Dodd: 30 Funniest Moments

He was embraced by the emerging television age, while always keeping the old-school comedy of the music hall alive. He was most in his element bounding onto the stage at smaller theatres — not the arenas he could so easily have filled — where he became the Scouse Bruce Springsteen of live comedy, often putting on intimate one-man shows lasting up to five hours. Proving there was no end to his talents, he also starred in an episode of Doctor Who, and played Malvolio in a televised adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Through his amazing routines, interviews and one-liners, we examine the career of this genuine student of comedy, who was also a highly successful recording artist. He even had the third best-selling single of the 1960s and was big muckers with The Beatles. We explore Ken's life-long love affair with his home town of Liverpool — in particular his Knotty Ash home patch — where he conceived the fanciful ‘jam-butty mines', where his Diddymen creations ‘worked'. We celebrate his 1965 residency at the London Palladium, where he had a recordbreaking 42-week run. We see personal highlights, such as the much-deserved statue of Ken (with tickling stick) unveiled in 2009, which proudly stands at Liverpool's Lime Street Station. And we celebrate the longoverdue knighthood he received in 2017. A large cast of friends, colleagues and fans from down the years give their personal insights, including Anita Harris, Scouse poet Roger McGough, and genuine super-fans and fellow Scousers Ricky Tomlinson and David Morrissey.