Michael Billington

Barking in Essex review

Clive Exton's play is neither sufficiently dark nor consistently funny.

Was there ever a time when Ken Dodd wasn't waving his tickling stick while firing off more gags than most of us ever learn in a lifetime? Now 85, the indefatigable jester of Knotty Ash is still knocking 'em in the aisles up and down the country with his famously overlong shows.

In How Tickled I've Been, Liza Tarbuck paid tribute to the comic with the help of Roy Hudd, the bishop of Liverpool, The Guardian's Michael Billington - a steadfast Doddy-holic - and her dad Jimmy, who does a very good impression of his fellow Liverpudlian.

The tax evasion court case that sullied his reputation briefly in the late 1980s - he was eventually acquitted - was mentioned only in terms of Dodd's ability to bounce back from adversity. The humiliating three-week trial was followed by a record-breaking 40-week engagement at the London Palladium, during which he introduced himself as "Kenneth Arthur Dodd, comedian, photographic playboy and failed accountant".

The one-time travelling salesman said he had the most wonderful job: "I only get to see people when they're happy."

Liza Tarbuck presents a look back at Doddy's 60 years in showbiz revolving around a new interview with him, including salutes from Liza's Dad, Jimmy, plus James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool, drama critic Michael Billington and Roy Hudd. I wish producer Graham Pass had asked me. When I ran my late mother's stall in St John's Market, Liverpool in the Sixties, Doddy (who was on at the Empire) came in for a Christmas drink with us market ladies on half-day closing (Wednesday). Tickled? For everyone, from Ada Stubbs (who sold chickens) to Pauline Griffiths (who sold flowers) it was as good as entertaining royalty. I remember him playing Malvolio (and well, too) in Twelfth Night at the Liverpool Playhouse. I will never forget seeing him at the London Palladium, laughing so much my children told me I had mascara streaks down to my chin.

It seemed to me to blend sentiment and humour rather uneasily as if afraid of making too much fun of a hallowed wartime institution... The one solid pleasure last night was watching the performance of Arthur Lowe as the organizing hero.