Ready to warm up your chuckle muscles?
This week: Ken Dodd takes centre stage in the Museum of Liverpool's Happiness! exhibition, a new photography book, two literature festivals and tour dates for 'nature's songwriter'
EVERYONE in Liverpool has a Ken Dodd story - that’s according to Karen O’Rourke, the curator behind Happiness!, a new exhibition about his life opening at the Museum of Liverpool tomorrow.
Given how widely the comedian toured, even into his 80s, you could suspect that Merseysiders are far from having the monopoly on ‘Doddy’ tales. Queues of fans outside the stage doors every night, many more watching his variety show on the telly in the 60s, those who handed over their pennies to help his hit single Tears soar to the top of the charts.
Few though could surely claim Doddy memories matching the calibre of John Chegwin’s, Sir Ken’s former sound man who became his super fan, following him to gigs all round the UK. Some of the items John collected along the way - programmes, posters - will be featured in the exhibition, alongside objects from the comedian’s own archive including his long, red ‘Huury Furry Moggy Coat’ and early ventriloquism figure, and memorabilia from National Museums Liverpool’s collections.
And crucially, but unexpectedly, some of the 1,000-plus notebooks Doddy kept since 1954 - notebooks that he had asked his wife Anne, Lady Dodd to destroy after his death.
‘Lady Dodd has had a very difficult relationship with these and it’s been something that we’ve had to be very aware of, not in how we display them but in how we treat them generally,’ says Karen, Curator (Sport, Music & Performance) at National Museums Liverpool.
‘My understanding is that the reason Ken made her promise to burn them was really because they were never meant for public consumption. He never intended for them to be published and I think Lady Dodd is very aware of that. But from watching her talk about them in interviews she’s aware of their cultural importance.’
Packed full of ideas for jokes and critiques of his performances, they also contain personal reflections such as ‘the damage he’s doing to his own health by being in these really, really long shows’. Pages topped with GOG (‘Good Old Gags’) show how his jokes developed from a simple idea into a line that would have a theatre full of people collapsing in laughter. Karen’s favourite is: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, sky-diving is not for you.’
Ten of the notebooks will be on display in the exhibition, with quotes also featured on some of the walls. The Museum of Liverpool team has been careful to limit access to the rest of the notebooks and to store them safely, in line with Lady Dodd’s wishes.
Happiness! aims to give a picture of all sides of Ken Dodd. The dedicated comic whose live shows became famous for overrunning by hours, giving audience members the impossible conundrum of whether to miss the end of his performance or the last train home. The serious ballad singer with 18 UK Top 40 hits. The philanthropist who continues to give after his death. The devoted husband and man of faith.
Visitors will be welcomed as if into a theatre, stepping inside a lobby with the look and feel of the front-of-house in plush reds, golds and dark greys, where the displays centre on Doddy’s TV and theatre career that included Malvolio in Twelfth Night at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1971 and Yorrick in a flashback in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet in 1996.
They will step behind the scenes - where the displays were inspired by a visit to Liverpool’s Royal Court - to discover more about ‘Ken the man’, the relationship to his fans, his charitable giving, the creation of Diddyland and his spirituality.
His love of variety also features, along with some of his own favourite funnymen including Arthur Askey and Ted Ray. Visitors will be invited to explore a digital Giggle Map of the UK, inspired by the one Ken said he had in his head complete with mental notes on what jokes worked well - or didn’t - in different places.
Sir Ken’s infamous tax evasion case (he was found not guilty) will not be featured because ‘we’ve been really thoughtful about what Lady Anne wants us to tell’, although he does refer to it himself in a video clip of his stage show.
Crucially, the exhibition is intended to be funny. Some of those installing it have been spotted giggling as they work.
‘If I haven’t brought the funny then I will be really upset because I will have failed,’ says Karen.
‘Ken has so many different facets to his personality and we wanted to show the professor of comedy and we wanted to show the deep-thinking man and we wanted to show the spiritual Ken. But if we didn’t bring the funny then I think we would be really missing a trick.
‘What’s been most important of all is to make sure we have Ken performing or, as Lady Anne puts it, in full throttle. We’ve brought in quite a lot of historic AV of him performing and on stage, so he’s telling the jokes, we’re not doing it for him.’
Such was Ken’s popularity that, during his funeral in 2018, thousands of his fans lined the streets of Liverpool to pay their respects.
‘I think he was just genuinely a nice guy. He just seems to have found a lot of time for people,’ says Karen.
‘Every now and then Anne will tell an anecdote and one of the things she talked about quite a lot was that even after he’d done the extraordinarily long stage shows he would still insist on staying at the stage door until everyone was happy.
‘His comedy was never cruel. He just enjoyed people and that reflects in the way people felt about him. ’
Happiness! is at the Museum of Liverpool from September 9 to March 3, 2024. Tickets on sale priced £5 for adults and concessions available, here.
We’re Also Buzzing About…
Frustration: Colin Wilkinson, formerly of Bluecoat Press, has launched a new book on Kickstarter under his new Yorkshire-based imprint Image&Reality. It will feature the work of photographer Patrick Ward, a key member of a generation of humanist photographers who burst through in the 1960s and included the war photographer Don McCullin. Find out more here.
Two literature festivals: At Manchester Literature Festival (October 7-22), George Monbiot will share how his new book Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet considers a way to grow more food with less farming and transform our relationship with the Earth. And Jeanette Winterson will launch her new book, Night Side of the River: Ghost Stories. Meanwhile, at Chester Literature Festival, historian David Olusoga will be interviewed by David Watson, Storyhouse chair and executive director of audiences and media at National Museums Liverpool. And award winning TV chef and broadcaster Andi Oliver will discuss her first cookbook The Pepperpot Diaries.
Folded Landscapes: ‘Nature’s songwriter’ Erland Cooper is touring to Manchester, Leeds, Gateshead, Lancaster and Hebden Bridge with music from his new album Folded Landscapes. His ‘urgent observation on climate change’ merges modern classical-electronic music with storytelling in a chamber string work figuratively thawing over seven movements. Sound intriguing? More on this here.
Thanks for reading this week’s Stored Honey. My Ken Dodd story, by the way, was visiting his library, then crammed into a house near his home in Knotty Ash, for a feature on his favourite childhood book (Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame) when I was visibly pregnant - and him giving me a tickling stick for my unborn daughter.
I’d love to hear yours if you have one. Get in touch on Twitter, in the comments or you by dropping me a line at tostoredhoney@gmail.com.
Have a great week,
Laura