Happiness and Tears

'I suffer from acute kleptomania. But when it gets bad, I take something for it.' Ken Dodd was a legend of British comedy. He launched his career in 1954, adopted his trademark 'tickling stick' two years later and went on to enjoy a sixty-year career as the nation's jester. Dodd's act was frenzied and zany, exploiting his saucer-eyed, buck-toothed appearance and deploying a repertoire of one-liners, whimsical and verbal inventions and liberal doses of saucy but never dirty jokes. Louis Barfe charts Dodd's life and extraordinarily long career, revealing him to be the last of the great variety acts and a comic phenomenon who delighted his audiences across seven decades. Reviews for Happiness and Tears: 'The definitive account' The Times. 'An industriously thorough, entertaining biography' The Spectator. 'Sure to delight Dodd's many admirers' TLS. 'Fascinatingly odd' Daily Express. 'An absolute joy' Choice.