Celebrities including Roy Chubby Brown, Ricky Tomlinson and Les Dennis joined hundreds of fans paying their final respects to comedian Sir Ken Dodd as he was remembered as the 'complete comedian' at his funeral today.
Fans lined the streets of Liverpool ahead of the thanksgiving service at the city's Anglican cathedral, which was full to its capacity of 2,700 - with other attendees including Jimmy Tarbuck and Harry Potter's Miriam Margolyes.
A horse-drawn hearse, a nod to his father's job as a coal merchant, led the funeral cortege from his home in the Knotty Ash area of the city from 11am, and residents and visitors were encouraged to line the route.
The much-loved comedian, aged 90, died at his home in eastern Liverpool earlier this month. His funeral service was open to the public, with a large screen broadcasting the ceremony for mourners outside the cathedral.
Also among those at the funeral were game show host Tom O'Connor, comedian Stan Boardman, Brookside actress Claire Sweeney, Coronation Street actress Stephanie Cole and former ITV chief Lord Michael Grade.
Tarbuck described Sir Ken as 'the greatest stage comic I've ever seen', telling the cathedral and hundreds of well-wishers watching on a screen outside this afternoon: 'I'm pleased for Ken there's yet another full house.'
Sir Ken's coffin is carried out of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral to the applause of the congregation after his funeral today
The Bishop of Liverpool Paul Bayes high fives a young child dressed as one of the Diddymen after Sir Ken's funeral today
Sir Ken's coffin is carried out of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral after his funeral service in the city this afternoon
The Diddymen chracters worked down the am Butty Mines, in the Snuff Quarry or in the Broken Biscuit Repair WorksJ
Children dressed as Diddymen watch the funeral cortege leave the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral after the service today
Sir Ken's coffin is carried out of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral (left and right) following the service this afternoon
Sir Ken Dodd's coffin arrived at Liverpool Cathedral today in a horse and cart - with a mini floral Ken Dodd attached to the end
The coffin is carried in during the funeral service of Sir Ken Dodd at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral this afternoon
Mourners sit in front of a photograph of Sir Ken during his funeral service in Liverpool this afternoon
Crowds gather outside the cathedral in the sunshine today to watch the funeral service of Sir Ken on a big screen
Members of the crowd hold tickle sticks as they gather to watch Sir Ken's funeral outside the cathedral in Liverpool today
Sir Ken's coffin arrived at the cathedral in a horse and cart - with one of his trademark Diddymen attached to the end of it - to applause from bystanders. Cadets lined the drive while the Red Rose Concert band played.
A funeral car containing floral tributes and family members followed - and, as Sir Ken's coffin waited outside the cathedral, the band broke into a version of 'Happiness'.
His coffin was carried through the cathedral to the sound of the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, followed by family members and members of the church.
Outside the cathedral, hundreds of people watched on a big screen - many holding tickle sticks and applauding. Canon Myles Davies, acting dean of Liverpool, described Sir Ken as a 'one of the great sons, a freeman of this city'.
During the service, Cole said two geniuses had been lost this month - Stephen Hawking and 'dear Doddy'. She said: 'Both introduced us to universes we could not have imagined, both had very original notions of time.
Paying tribute to Sir Ken, she said: 'He was a gentle man. He had a deep humanity and he made everyone he spoke to feel special. The first time I met him I was amazed by his lack of ego and his genuine interest in all that he met.'
Sir Ken (left) died at his home in Knotty Ash earlier this month. The programme for his funeral this afternoon is pictured (right)
Pallbearers carry Sir Ken's coffin into Liverpool Anglican Cathedral for his funeral. He died aged 90 on March 11
Comedy legend Sir Ken's career stretched over seven decades and he was famous for his jokes and singing voice
The coffin is carried in during the funeral service for Sir Ken at the cathedral following his death earlier this month
Jimmy Tarbuck said Sir Ken was 'the greatest stage comic', adding that he was pleased 'there's yet another full house
Sir Ken's coffin was carried through the cathedral to the sound of Intermezzo - Cavalleria Rusticana Pietro Mascagni
Tarbuck, who spoke before reading a passage based on Psalm 139, said: 'What a perfect venue for our city's hero, perhaps our city's greatest hero and I'm pleased for Ken there's yet another full house.'
He said he had met Sir Ken 57 years ago and 'just fell in love with him'. He added: 'He sang Happiness because he gave happiness.' He told the congregation it was an 'honour' and a 'joy' to watch Sir Ken.
He said: 'He set a standard, ladies and gentlemen, which no one has remotely approached since.' He finished by saying: 'I just want to thank you Ken and, in the words of Tina Turner, it's very easy, you're simply the best.'Jimmy Cricket paid tribute to Sir Ken before he gave a reading from St John's gospel. He described him as 'one of the most different, original, innovative and gifted comedians'.
He said: 'We enjoyed him on the radio and the television but the live shows were special. From the moment he went on with his tickling sticks he created magic.'
He added: 'Ken always said his gift, his talents, were from God and comedians like Ken, they only come once in a lifetime. We thank God today that he came during our lifetime.'
Friend, author and producer John Fisher described Sir Ken as a 'joking, jumping, singing, skipping, verbal, visual whirlwind of laughter'. He said: 'The lights are dimmed, the curtains closed on his wonderful world of variety.
'Ken Dodd was, no contest, the complete comedian, our greatest entertainer. But he was more. He was a life-enhancing force of nature.' He ended by saying: 'We'll never see the like of Ken Dodd again. Thank you Sir Ken, tatty bye.'
Family members also paid tribute with Ken's great nephew and godson reading on their behalf.
Corporal Alex Otley said his mother had many wonderful memories of Sir Ken when he would work on crafting his jokes sitting round the kitchen table.
Reading on her behalf, Corporal Otley said: 'It was an education to watch and listen to him construct a joke or song. I myself would play on his beautiful piano. He said he would give me a bottle of champagne when I could play Moonlight Sonata.
'I got as far as a Mars bar when I was aged 11. I think he was quite proud when after ear piercing lessons on the violin I played with the Liverpool philharmonic. He would say be original, be determined and just do it. If you fail remember that the man who never made a mistake never made anything.'
Peter Rogan, a friend for 40 years, paid tribute to his wife Lady Anne who he said was the first love of his life and said their recent wedding day was one of the most memorable occasions of their lives.
'I can still feel the pain in my sides from laughing. I would just see him and start laughing. I just want to thank him for a lifetime of laughter'
Lord Michael Grade
'He was a one off. There will never be another Ken Dodd. Who can stand for four or five hours without repeating a single line and having all that life and joy? He was phenomenal'
Ricky Tomlinson
'He was a genius and a very kind man - always more interested in other people other than himself'
Stephanie Cole
'He knew it all, he was a master. We all enjoyed him on radio and television - but to see those live shows, and to see him in full throttle, we will never see the likes again'
He said: 'A couple of years ago a journalist asked how Ken how he would like to be remembered. He replied to have given us happiness and laughter. He certainly did that. I'm going to miss you something awful my friend.'
In an address, acting dean of Liverpool Canon Myles Davies said: 'Ken would be so pleased, and probably humbled too, by the way his home city and people from all over poured out their tributes to him in these last weeks.'
He said the cathedral was 'crowded out', with many more watching the service outside. Canon Davies said: 'What a wonderful tribute to someone who has spent his life persuading us all to exercise our chuckle muscles.'Prayers were led by the Rev Julia Jesson, the vicar of St John the Evangelist Church in Knotty Ash, where Sir Ken was a member of the congregation. A recording of the comedian singing Absent Friends was played.
Diddymen followed Sir Ken's coffin as it was carried out of the cathedral to applause at the end of the service, which lasted one hour and 45 minutes.
Speaking to Sky News after the service, Tarbuck said: 'I thought it was the nicest service I've seen in someone's memory, and I think without a shadow of a doubt all these people would agree. He's Liverpool's leading hero.
'He's lived here all his live. The best comic that's ever come out of Liverpool and I think he's the greatest comedian on stage this country's ever seen.
'He'd speak to everybody. He was a very nice man, very friendly guy. Great, great authority on comedy, bar none.
'He would spend hours in the libraries here in Liverpool and he liked to read. He's a private man in many ways, but he read a great deal. He was the greatest.'
Speaking after the service, comedian Johnny Vegas said he was a great influence on him and there 'were not enough words to describe him'. He said: 'He loved comedy and he loved people. Very early on in my career I waited a long time to get tickets to see him and waited a long time after the show to meet him.
'When I did get to meet him he was so full of knowledge and advice. The word legend is bandied about but he was a legend and a people person. It's a tragic day but a day where we're not allowed to cry – he lived for happiness and he spread happiness.'
Margoyles said she cried throughout the service. She said: 'I loved him like everybody else. We were friends for 40 years.'
Earlier, Lord Grade told how he first saw Sir Ken as a fan in the 1960s, saying: 'My memories of him are just laughing.
'I went to see him because I loved comedy and had heard about him before we started working together.
'I can still feel the pain in my sides from laughing. I would just see him and start laughing. I just want to thank him for a lifetime of laughter.'
Royle Family actor Tomlinson added: 'He was a one off. There will never be another Ken Dodd. Who can stand for four or five hours without repeating a single line and having all that life and joy? He was phenomenal.
'That's why they're lining the streets of Liverpool to say goodbye. He loves the people of Liverpool and they loved him. Let's hope his legend lives on. I challenge any of the young comedians today to do four or five hours like Doddy did.'
Coronation Street actress Cole also paid tribute to Sir Ken, describing him as a genius. She said: 'He was a genius and a very kind man - always more interested in other people other than himself.
'He was an extraordinarily well read man. He gave us all the most enormous amount of joy.'
Boardman said: 'He was a Liverpool man. He stayed in Liverpool, was born in Liverpool and died in Liverpool. And (he was) respected by everyone in Liverpool, not just as a comedian but as a man. He was a great fella.'
Speaking outside the cathedral, comedian Roy Chubby Brown said: 'I've been all over the world in my 50 years and I don't know anyone who didn't admire Ken Dodd.
'Everybody loved Ken and when I used to say 'oh he talks to me on the phone and he's a friend' I was more popular than ever.'
And Tarbuck added: 'He was the greatest stage comic I've ever seen. I mean, at the Palladium, he did three seasons there and it was glorious. He never got giggle laughter, never little titters, there were roars of laughter like you've never heard. I've never seen anybody get laughs like him.'
Flags at Liverpool Town Hall, St George's Hall, Cunard Building and Central Library have been lowered for the day as a mark of respect. One fan joked she expected the funeral to go on until midnight - a reference to Sir Ken's legendary shows that often went into the early hours of the morning.
Gillian Prince, 54, recalled going to one of his shows in Southport about ten years ago. She said: 'We expect the funeral will go on until midnight.'We didn't get out until 1am when we went to see him. He was so funny. He walked on stage and said 'It's like looking at outpatients'.
'He brought a lot of joy. We wanted to come and pay tribute. He's been there throughout our childhood. While we were growing up he was always there.'
Thomas Ryan, 74, and Dorothy Ryan, 71, saw him at Bolton Town Hall 18 months ago.
Mr Ryan said: 'The show went on until 2am. He offered to give us a lift home. He asked if there were any Scousers in the audience and I put my hand up and he said he'd give us a lift.
'I never liked him that much until I saw him on stage. He was so funny. We wanted to come and pay tribute. There's no one like Ken Dodd.'
Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Councillor Malcolm Kennedy, said: 'Although Wednesday will be a sombre occasion, it is an opportunity for us all to pay tribute to an unforgettable man and I can think of nothing more fitting than huge crowds lining the streets for his final act.
'There will never be another comedian like Ken, his passing marks the end of an era in British entertainment and I'm sure he'll be tickled that the city will be putting on such a show in his honour.'
Others had travelled especially to pay tribute. Veronica and Stephen Lockley left Cannock at 6am to attend the service.
Holding a tickle stick, Mr Lockley, 59, said: 'We've seen him nine or 10 times – the last time was September. I think the older he got the better he was.
'He was brilliant. He's a proper legend and a fantastic singer – and the Diddymen - we can't forget the Diddymen. He will be missed. There's no one like him.'
The funeral service was followed by a private interment. The comic's trademark tickling sticks were placed around Liverpool landmarks ahead of the service, including on the town hall and a statue of The Beatles at the Pier Head.
The props were made famous by the much-loved comedian, and have been placed on landmarks ahead of his funeral.
Two of the red, white and blue sticks have been placed on Liverpool Town Hall, with others adorning a statue of The Beatles on the Pier Head, the Queen Victoria Monument on Derby Square, the Cunard Building and the Mersey Ferry.
A horse-drawn hearse, a nod to his father's job as a coal merchant, led the funeral cortege from East Prescot Road at 11am
Gregor Gee, a fan of Sir Ken, arrives ahead of the comedian's funeral service at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral today
Tickle sticks are tied to the approach to Liverpool Cathedral ahead of the comedian Sir Ken Dodd's funeral today
A horse-drawn hearse, a nod to his father's job as a coal merchant, will lead the funeral cortege in Liverpool today
A young boy holds a tickle stick today as people pay their respects outside the home of Sir Ken in Knotty Ash, Liverpool
A Ken Dodd fan's dog Princess Cleopatra arrives for the funeral of the comedian in Liverpool today
Tickle sticks are tied to the approach to Liverpool Cathedral this morning ahead of the Funeral for comedian Sir Ken Dodd
Floral tributes outside the home of Sir Ken in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, where the much-loved comedian died earlier this month
Floral tributes line the street outside the home of Sir Ken in Knotty Ash, ahead of his funeral at Liverpool Cathedral today
Tickle sticks are placed outside the home of Sir Ken in Knotty Ash, ahead of his funeral at Liverpool Cathedral today
A statue of Sir Ken has been returned to Liverpool Lime Street train station for the day after it was removed temporarily for building work to be carried out.
Earlier today, his fellow comedian Cricket told ITV's Good Morning Britain: 'He knew it all, he was a master.
'When you bought a ticket - I mean we all enjoyed him on radio and television - but to see those live shows, and to see him in full throttle, we will never see the likes again.'
Cricket, who said Sir Ken was a 'special person', also told how the comedian would talk about the 'rainbow of laughter', including white for children, yellow for visual, red for love and darker colours for cynicism.
Wirral Globe journalist Peter Grant arrives for the funeral. He has written an emotional obituary to his close friend Sir Ken
Another said: 'Got to love the old woman asking Jimmy Tarbuck, live on Sky News, if he is Roy Hudd at the funeral of Ken Dodd.'
Thousands of mourners including Les Dennis, Roy Chubby Brown and Claire Sweeney gathered to say a final 'tatty bye' to the much-loved Sir Ken today.
Fans, family and dignitaries were also at the cathedral to pay their final respects to the comic, who died at his home in Knotty Ash earlier this month aged 90.
The cathedral was full for the ceremony, with the congregation including Diddymen and a dog in a pram, and hundreds of mourners gathered outside.
Fans had lined the streets as a horse-drawn carriage bearing his coffin, with a bouquet of yellow sunflowers atop and one of his famous trademark Diddymen.
Comedy colossus from a vanishing age: No one was funnier than Doddy, writes ROGER LEWIS, who pays tribute to his community singalongs, funny faces... and jokes about the taxman
Sir Ken Dodd, pictured at Buckingham Palace in March last year with his partner Anne Jones after he was made a Knight Bachelor made a Knight Bachelor of the British Empire
He marched on stage wearing a big moulting raccoon-skin coat, with buttons the size of dinner plates. On his head was a tropical pith helmet. He waved a Union Jack and sang bursts of 'On the Road to Mandalay!' composed by Rudyard Kipling in 1892.
He then shouted to the eager audience: 'Stand up for yourselves! Let them know you're British!' With masterly timing he added: 'Play on their sympathies...'
Sir Ken Dodd, who died earlier this month aged 90, was the last of the great music hall comedians. When I saw him in full flight last year in Wimbledon, his act was defiantly anachronistic, enshrining a Blitz atmosphere, as if Hitler's bombs were falling outside, or the Kaiser was still menacing our boys at the Front.
'What a beautiful day,' he said, 'for going up to Count Zeppelin and saying: 'You'll never sell a sausage that size'.'
Doddy told archaic jokes about dumb blondes, nagging wives, cheating husbands, stockings, vests, long-johns, mean northerners, tin baths, girdles, soot and defunct TV programmes — though he seemed unaware they were defunct. He often mentioned his tax trial, which took place in 1989.
There were prolonged community singalongs, as if we were cheering ourselves up in an air raid shelter or hiding from the Boers.
There was a slightly queasy and surrealist story about his being a sexual reject, where Doddy said: 'I shave one of my legs, ladies and gentlemen, so that in the dark I can caress it and pretend I am in bed with a woman.'
Altogether, seeing Ken Dodd live was to rediscover post-war music hall England where the strongest oath was 'By Jove!'
Doddy was slightly more camp in the flesh than I'd expected, like a pantomime dame with elongated bony, expressive fingers and cart-wheeling arms.
His rainbow make-up was unabashedly for the sulphur flare of 19th-century footlights, the rouge, the mascara and the purple lips.
For all that, he always went on and on about 'happiness' and a need to elicit 'cascading cacophonies of chuckles, great gurgling guffaws', Doddy's waxen face registered pain and bewilderment better than positivity.
Indeed, when he pulled a funny face, making a meal of his jutting fangs, zany hair and staring eyes, he was a scary gargoyle, like a creature who'd fallen off a cathedral.
Sir Ken Dodd (pictured in 2016), who died earlier this month aged 90, was the last of the great music hall comedians
Entertainer George Melly, who once witnessed Doddy singing Sonny Boy to a ventriloquist's doll famously named Dickie Mint, was similarly disconcerted, and thought Doddy was something of a ventriloquist's doll himself: 'You get him out of the box, push him on stage and he's brilliant, absolutely brilliant' — but not exactly recognisably human.
This is because Doddy was much more than a comedian. What he was doing was Performance Art.
I was transfixed as the jokes fell like leaves, one after the other — 'Love is like a set of bagpipes. You don't know what to do with your hands'; 'I wanted to take my dog to obedience class, but he wouldn't go' — and the audience laughter ebbed and flowed in great gusts.
'Fellas, why don't you go home tonight, grab a handful of ice, throw it down the missus's top, and say: 'How about that for a new chest freezer?'
That these were terrible jokes was paradoxically part of the fun, like Tommy Cooper's magic tricks going wrong. Though bouncy and eccentric, trying hard to incite laughter as a reflex, Doddy in his delivery had a dryness as well as considerable nuance.
His state of being was one of surprising sweetness — enabling him to get away with a line like this: 'My life has been a series of tragedies, ladies and gentlemen, culminating in tonight.'
Doddy possessed none of the rasping, hectoring, excitable quality common to stand-ups. None of their modern-day crudity. He did, though, have the great actor's gimlet eye, which missed nothing. It was as if he was fully capable of noticing and reacting to each and every audience member individually — to see if they were paying attention or fidgeting or sneaking to the toilets. He addressed patrons in the stalls ('yes, you, missus') like Dame Edna purring at her 'possums'.
He mumbled and coughed now and again, and seemed susceptible to pollen and dust.
Yet it was hard to know if this was genuine frailty as he was in his tenth decade, or whether it was all an ingenious way of helping win us over, to create the necessary intimacy, the bond between artiste and audience — because the show still lasted five hours. 'This isn't television, missus,' he warned at one point. 'You can't turn me off.'
Jimmy Tarbuck has remembered how Sir Ken did three seasons at the London Palladium, 'and it was glorious'
Kenneth Arthur Dodd was born on November 8, 1927, in Knotty Ash, Liverpool. He remained in the double-fronted family home all his life, the furniture and table-settings still arranged as his late mother had left them. Knotty Ash is where he died.
It is one thing to have had a happy childhood, as Doddy did by all accounts, but quite another never to be able to leave most of it behind. And you hardly need to be a psychologist to detect here the origins of Doddy's comic style, banging a drum, wearing silly hats, making a noise — he was the clown as grown-up baby.
His father was a coal merchant, who in his spare time played the saxophone, clarinet and double bass. He took his son to the cinema and theatre regularly — and the future entertainer remembered of the stars he saw that 'those people looked so happy and healthy. That's the job for me'.
Doddy was given a set of puppets, read leaflets on ventriloquism and began showing off in church halls at amateur dramatics and concert parties.
He left Holt Grammar School at 14 to help his father deliver coal around Merseyside — persuading, cajoling, selling things to the public — and at the weekend dressed up and billed himself as Professor Yaffle Chucklebutty, Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter, telling corny gags, indulging in goonish word-play (tattyfilarious, plumptious), and generally drawing attention to his goofy appearance, in order to amuse wounded soldiers at military hospitals.
The coal — 'sex is what posh people have their coal delivered in' — was first taken to Knotty Ash, and some say it accounted for that asthmatic cough of his.
Doddy and his brother would then deliver it by horse and cart, says BBC Sports presenter Garry Richardson, who made a documentary about his hero and was the last person to interview him.
'Ken reminisced about how they went to Wrexham horse sales one day and bought 'a wonderful horse called Duke', and that's how they travelled the streets of Liverpool,' says Richardson.
'After 12 years, Ken bought a Luton van and started work as a door-to-door salesman selling buckets, pans, polish, soap powder. He told me that's where his rapport with audiences began.
'He said: 'I would knock on the door and say: 'Good morning madam'.' The rest is history.'
Sir Ken, pictured with four of his Diddymen characters in 2001, ahead of him being made a Freeman of the City of Liverpool
Years later, Doddy reflected that 'to make people laugh and bring some cheerfulness into the lives of so many people has been a very great privilege'. He was a true jester, his tickling stick his equivalent of the Fool's pig's bladder.
He made his professional debut at the Nottingham Empire in 1954 and was soon booked for summer seasons in Blackpool. Only in Glasgow was he heckled. 'What a horrible sight!' someone yelled.
Doddy had his own television series by 1959, and he was to remain a popular turn on The Good Old Days, where audiences dressed up in Victorian costume.
To win a family audience, he was frequently accompanied by puppets or child actors portraying The Diddy Men, lurid midgets who worked down the Jam Butty Mines, in the Snuff Quarry or in the Broken Biscuit Repair Works.
In 1965, Doddy packed the London Palladium for 42 consecutive weeks. Doddy's Here! netted him £126,000. John Osborne, the playwright creator of failing music-hall performer Archie Rice in The Entertainer, took the entire Royal Court Theatre Company 'to see a real comic artist at work'.
By 1970, Doddy was earning £10,000 a week for his appearances. In 1982, his income was £1,154,566.
He also had a concurrent career as a singer of lachrymose romantic ballads, and Doddy's records sold millions. 'Happiness', 'Tears', and 'Promises' were dislodged from the charts only by the advent of The Rolling Stones.
Money was very important to him, a symbol or indication of what he called 'a colossal desire to be loved', as measured by applause and tickets sold. Doddy hoarded his wealth — never spent any of it. Financial worth came to be a reflection of self-worth.
By 1986, there were 20 offshore bank accounts in places such as the Isle of Man and Jersey, holding £777,453. But most of his loot was kept in used notes and bags of coins stashed in the attic, under the stairs and in the wardrobes in Knotty Ash. There was £300,000 in a shoe box.
When the Inland Revenue prosecuted him for unpaid tax on the interest these nest eggs should have accrued, Doddy said he didn't owe them a penny because 'I live near the seaside'.
Though he was found not guilty after a four-week trial, he was left with legal costs of £2 million, and the details that emerged, when he was grilled by prosecutor Brian Leveson — the lawyer behind the Leveson Inquiry — were peculiar.
Doddy's frugality, for example, would have impressed Ebenezer Scrooge, as since 1949 his total expenditure on all outgoings — i.e. across 40 years — was reported as £23,000. His annual disbursement on wine and meals out was approximately £50. The first time he went on holiday was when he was 51. Doddy's counsel, George Carman, bewilderingly argued that his client hid money under the floorboards because 'he feared Britain was on the brink of a civil war'.
But the truth is more that Doddy had an entertainer's acquisitive ego — he was tenacious and obstinate (what was his was his. He did not like sharing or being told what to do). And if he was a genius at asserting his will over an audience, keeping us locked in for hours, this is because, in all areas of his life and work, he needed to have perfect control, complete manipulative power. Doddy's ability to charm his audience wasn't infallible. When a woman told him she was a cleaner, and he quipped, 'Oh, so you're a scrubber?' she reached into her shopping bag, pulled out a leg of lamb and hit him over the head with it. 'And that's my tickling stick!' she said.
Perhaps it was to avoid moments like this that Doddy — who had two long-term fiancees in his life — didn't marry until the very end. On Friday, on his deathbed in Knotty Ash, he quietly wed his partner of 40 years, Anne Jones, a former Bluebell dancer.
Sir Ken, pictured with famed dance troupe the Tiller Girls in 1971, died earlier this month aged 90
Some years ago, he told the psychiatrist Anthony Clare that he 'didn't have time to get married', and a shocked Clare replied: 'In your list of priorities it wasn't high enough, because you would do it if you wanted to do it.'
Ken's first partner, Anita Boutin, was with him for 24 years until her death at 45 in 1977 from a brain tumour. The couple had been engaged for almost their entire relationship. She'd told one reporter when asked when they might wed: 'It's up to Ken.'
Anita was buried at the local church in Knotty Ash — where Ken's mother had been laid to rest eight years previously — and each Christmas Day he would place flowers on both their graves.
It's hard to imagine a sadder image of the great clown, who in backstage photographs could often appear melancholy and reflective, a milk-white ghost. He once said morosely: 'I had no children. I had no Rolls-Royce. I had no villa in Spain.' But much of this was his own choice.
Kenneth Branagh observed that Doddy 'can suggest ticklish delight and black despair', and cast him as Yorick in a production of Hamlet, where the character — normally simply a skull unearthed by gravediggers — appeared in a flashback. Doddy also played Malvolio, the tragically pompous buffoon in Twelfth Night, at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1971.
The late comic actor Ken Campbell, only semi-tongue-in-cheek, believed Doddy should have been invited to join the National Theatre. He'd not have been averse to this, and relished the thought of 'the fear and the discipline of being a real actor in a team'.
But would he really have fitted into a team? I hardly think so. I can't begin to imagine Doddy as an ensemble player. As he told Clare: 'I was always trying to become a name. I was always trying to get to the top of the bill. I always wanted to be a star. I love being a star. I love being Ken Dodd.'
So we can see why he'd have been averse to marriage, why all his professional life Doddy avoided what he believed were the traps and impositions of family life.
It would have meant a loss of control — he'd have had to share something of himself.
Meanwhile, Anne Jones followed him everywhere. While the great man held everyone captive on stage, Anne would set up a little stall in the foyer and sell the Doddy memorabilia, the Diddymen hats and tickling sticks. I myself bought an inscribed copy of Doddy's memoir, Look At It My Way, from Anne's stall in the theatre in Wimbledon.
It is as a unique vaudeville phenomenon spewing forth jokes that Doddy will be remembered. When a critic tried to be clever and compared Doddy's whimsy with P.G. Wodehouse, the comic retorted: 'Wodehouse should try playing the Golden Garter Club in Wythenshawe on a Saturday night'.
The Guinness Book of Records reckoned Doddy could tell 1,500 jokes in three hours, and Doddy's rationale was 'I try to give value for money'.
He kept touring until the very end, up and down the country — Bridlington, Cannock, Frome, Whitley Bay — filling theatres and floral halls on Sunday afternoons, keeping the audience there until Monday morning. 'You think you can get away, but you can't. I'll follow you home and shout jokes through the letterbox.'
No one doubted the threat was real. When I saw him live, I'd never felt quite so transported back in time. The support act was a George Formby impersonator, which helped intensify the Forties mood. 'We've been walking him around the theatre to sober him up,' said Doddy generously. 'Give him a big hand.'
Doddy then glanced at the auditorium and said it reminded him of an outpatients' department and a geriatric ward. 'Under your seats you'll find a Will Form.'
Hours later he still wouldn't relent and, like a benign dictator, he exacted his control over us. 'Do you give in?' he entreated at last. And by then, of course we did.
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