Ken Dodd RIP

[OldBloke]

"The man who invented cats' eyes got the idea when he saw the eyes of a cat in his headlights. If the cat had been going the other way, he would have invented the pencil sharpener." :roflmao:

[TeaLeaf]

I personally  did not find Ken Dodd (in general) very funny.  I remember seeing him at a corporate do for Allied Dunbar in the 90's.  The previous year's AD event they had booked Bernard Manning - and the next morning had to send flowers to all the female attendees along with an apology, so the following year they went too far the other way and booked Ken Dodd.   He came on stage after the dinner and and just fell flat, none of his jokes worked and the audience was not laughing, it was truly cringeworthy.   He plugged away though and 25 minutes into the set he went to the 'emergency jokes' for the audience, which we all about AD senior managers/directors, which might have had a chance of working but for the fact that 99% of the audience did not know who the heck these senior AD named people were.  But he carried on anyway and kept delivery his jokes.  By the end of the night half the c.1,000 in the room had left and walked into to the adjoining bar.

I learnt two things about Dodd that night.

1. I honestly did not like his general style of humour. I found more 'cringe' in it than 'laughs'.  
2. I really respected his determination when he continued in the face of total adversity and actually delivered a full 3 hour post-dinner set in that room, despite getting almost zero laughs throughout.

He died horribly on stage that night, but he won my respect as a performer.

[TheDvEight]

No can't say I ever enjoyed his humour but full credit for standing on stage for what must be a daunting experience at first. RIP