Scenes from British Life II: Ken Dodd at Bournemouth
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The last of the old school of comics, we reckoned. Dodd's show was a
marathon. It felt cosy in a funny sort of way: the place was packed,
the average age was about 60 and the sea was nearby. I suddenly,
briefly, felt almost as if I was part of a gigantic family. Dodd and
audience match each other just as well as a bunch of middle class
rebellious teenagers match Razorlight. Dodd and his audience are
ageing, financially careful, hate paying tax and think there are far
too many foreigners in the country. In other words they are working
class Tories, who in all likelihood have given up on the Conservative
Party because it has become too limp-wristed.
Dodd, who started out in Liverpool as a coal hauler in the 40s, was
acquitted of tax evasion in 1989 (he had 336,000 quid hidden in his
loft). He said at one point: 'Every time I see Gordon Brown on the
telly I think: "I bought that suit"'.
Dodd's jokes reflect a tragic view of life that his audience
recognizes and shares - the laughter of delight in recognition rang
out all night: life's a struggle; the authorities are out to get your
money; you've married a woman who has become ugly and boring; sex is a
rarity; kids are ingrates and infirmity and death are just round the
corner. All that's left to hope for, when you're eventually carted off
to the nursing home, is 'I hope I get a bed by a window'.
And the audience laughed and laughed at it. Foreigners were not
mentioned. Sexist gags were few and far between. But the extraordinary
thing was four hours of gags. Old gags; older gags; jokes whose
exposition was of Byzantine complication and led to a feeble schoolboy
pay off; jokes that were old before the second world war; jokes you
told at school; puns that were on a level of Christmas cracker mottos.
It all went in the mix; nothing was wasted. And I laughed my head off
at a lot of it.
He had musical interludes with a ukulele player and a busty pianist
who worked whole bars of God Save the Queen into her easy listening
repertoire. He reappeared with a union jack hat on and a red furry
coat. It all went down very well. People went out for cigarette breaks
and beer. Grey-faced middle-aged men on sticks stood outside smoking
and enquiring after that afternoon's Southampton match. It was very
cold. Inside the old auditorium, Doddy, as he's known, basked in the
limelight, admitted cheerfully he was addicted to it and just carried
on. And on. At the end he indulged his own and the audience's taste
for nostalgia with a list of dead comics and singers. 'Do you think
we'll ever see their like again?' he asked. 'No,' the audience
bellowed. 'What about modern comics?' he asked. 'They're rubbish,'
said a white haired man in front of me, who hadn't laughed much
throughout the show but evidently felt stronglt on this point.
We finally got out about 12.15, having been inside since seven. As
we walked back up to the boarding house, where stag weekenders munched
side by side with asylum seekers living on benefits, past the frozen
palm trees, I thought vague things about the past and another country.