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I GUESS most journalists have a list of celebrities they would love to have interviewed. One name I’d include is comedian Ken Dodd.
What most people do not realise is that Ken had an abiding interest in Spiritualism and mediumship. More of that in a moment.
First let’s set the scene.
Knighted in 2017 for services to show business and charity, Ken was born in Knotty Ash, Liverpool in 1927. Passing on there five years ago at the ripe age of 90, Ken was awarded an OBE in 1982.
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KEN DODD: “You never really lose anyone you love.”
(Photo David A. Ellis)
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Famed for his tickling sticks and the Diddymen, after his passing fellow Liverpudlian comedian Jimmy Tarbuck termed him “the greatest stage comic the country has ever seen.”
Turning to Ken’s personal life, tragedy struck in 1977 when his then partner Anita passed on from a brain tumour aged 45. They were together for 22 years.
Ken later found love again with Anne Jones. The couple married just two days before his passing.
To the present, and last month a lead story in the Daily Star announced, “Widow senses the spirit of funnyman in Knotty Ash.”
In huge capital letters, the main headline asked, “Doddy didn’t become a ghost, Diddy?”
Journalist Stian Alexander began by saying “The ghost of comedy legend Sir Ken Dodd has been haunting his old house in Knotty Ash by slamming doors. Best call in the Diddymen.”
Inside the paper, Lady Anne Dodd said that Ken’s spirit “remains everywhere” in the farmhouse where he was born and died.
“The weirdest thing is the door,” she added. “Every so often it closes and we’ve all heard it.
“You think ‘For goodness sake. It’s just air or someone has opened another door,’ but it’s not. He’s around.”
Lady Anne added that she often dreams of Ken, adding, “It’s so real I say, ‘Please don’t go away’.”
Some years ago, the News of the World printed a three-page special on Ken’s “life of tears and laughter.”
In enormous headlines, the angle it took was that his mother “haunts me when I’m on stage” and “is with me every minute of every day.”
When his mother passed on, Ken “thought it would be the end of my world. We’d always been so close.
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According to the 'Daily Star' the ghost of comedy legend
Sir Ken Dodd has been haunting his old house in
Knotty Ash, pictured here.
(Photo: Rept0n1x) |
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“I was inconsolable over her death. But then I realised that you never really lose anyone you love.”
Ken added that he also started to feel his father’s spirit presence after he passed on ten years later.
“They will both always be with me,” he said. “Knowing they’re there is a wonderful support. It’s something I can’t put into words – it’s too precious a feeling.”
When we were based in London’s Holborn, Ken used to visit our bookshop, took out a subscription to Psychic News and also had at least one sitting with medium Ena Twigg.
In the mid-1970s, Ken said that famous music hall performer Dan Leno, who passed on in 1904, helped him.
Another time, Ken was sitting at home at midnight when he “looked up and saw an arm floating in through the door from the kitchen. The hand was cupped as if it were reaching for a glass.
“In the dim light I thought it was my father and I called out. There was no reply… No, I didn’t imagine it. The whole thing was quite real and solid.”
Ken achieved a Guinness World Record in 1974 after telling 1,500 one-liners in three-and-a-half hours at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre – a gag rate of one every 7.14 seconds.
Sadly, I can’t find a single joke on the internet he told about life after death, mediums or psychic matters. If you locate one, do let me know, so we can share it with others in honour of someone who could well be termed “The King of comedy.”
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