by Reg » Fri Oct 30, 2009 6:14 pm
Dawson's gone.....
Les Dawson was born in Manchester in 1934 and rose to fame with jokes insulting his wife and the mother-in-law, a staple, if rather un-PC, type of British humour. He left the Army after his National Service and as he had had a short story published he moved to Paris to become a writer. What in fact happened was he started to play the piano in a brothel to pay the bills (although for weeks he thought it was nothing more than a cabaret club!)
His act was bright and breezy and went down well with most audiences (although there was always one or two where he died on stage, one time being when he had to follow two minutes silence in respect of the recently deceased club chairman!), but the act really turned the corner when he was engaged at a Hull club, and after a whole week of performances, he got drunk at before the last, and came on bemoaning life, and slumped over the piano. 'I don't have to do this for a living, I just do it for the luxuries like bread and shoes'. On this his new act was born, but it didn't make too much difference until he entered Opportunity Knocks! in 1967 and won. He never really looked back.
Dawson began his entertainment career as a club pianist ("I finally heard some applause from a bald man and said 'thank you for clapping me' and he said 'I'm not clapping - I'm slapping me head to keep awake.'"); but found that he got more laughs by playing wrong notes and complaining to the audience.
He made his television debut in the talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1967 and was seldom absent from British television screens in the years that followed. His best-known routines featured Roy Barraclough and Dawson as two elderly women, Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Shufflebotham. Cissie had pretensions of refinement and often corrected Ada's malapropisms or vulgar expressions. As authentic characters of their day, they spoke some words aloud but only mouthed others, particularly those pertaining to bodily functions and sex.
No respectable woman would have said, for instance, "She's having a hysterectomy." Instead they would have mouthed, "She's having women's troubles."(Dawson's character, of course, mistakenly said "hysterical rectomy.") These female characters were based on those Les Dawson knew in real life. He explained that this mouthing of words was a habit of millworkers trying to communicate over the tremendous racket of the looms, and then resorted to in daily life for indelicate subjects. To further portray the reality of northern, working-class women, Cissie and Ada would sit with folded arms, occasionally adjusting their bosoms by a hoist of the forearms. Many of the Cissie and Ada sketches were written by Terry Ravenscroft. This was also typical of pantomime dame style, an act copied faithfully from his hero, Norman Evans, who had made famous his act Over The Garden Wall.
One of Les's best loved routines was where he would perform a song on the piano, however, he would play the piano very badly. It is alleged that it takes a very good piano player to play the piano as 'badly' as Les could.
Les Dawson was of portly build and often dressed in the traditional 'John Bull' of England costume. He introduced to his BBC TV shows a dancing group of very fat ladies called the Roly Polys. He loved to undercut his own fondness for high culture. For example, he was a talented pianist but developed a gag where he would begin to play a familiar piece such as Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. After he had established the identity of the piece being performed, Dawson would introduce hideously wrong notes without appearing to realise that he had done so, meanwhile smiling unctuously and apparently relishing the accuracy and soul of his own performance. He also used a grand piano in a series of sketches where it became animated, for example, trying to walk away from him across the stage, collapsing or shutting its lid etc.
Dawson's style as a comic performer was world-weary, lugubrious and earthy. He was as popular with female as with male audiences, and genuinely loved by the British public. A news reporter from The Sun looking for him after a show to interview him found him joking with and making some cleaning women laugh backstage.
Before his fame Dawson wrote poetry and kept it secret. It was not expected that someone of his working class background should harbour literary ambitions. In a BBC TV documentary about his life, he spoke about his love for some canonical figures in English literature, in particular Charles Lamb, whose somewhat florid style influenced Dawson's own.
His love of language influenced many of his comedy routines - for example one otherwise fairly routine joke began with the line "I was vouchsafed this vision by a pockmarked Lascar in the arms of a frump in a Huddersfield bordello...". He was also a master of painting a beautiful word picture and then letting the audience down with a bump: "The other day I was gazing up at the night sky, a purple vault fretted with a myriad points of light twinkling in wondrous formation, while shooting stars streaked across the heavens, and I thought: I really must repair the roof on this toilet."
Dawson wrote many novels but was always regarded solely as an entertainer in the public imagination, and this saddened him. He told this second wife, Tracey, "Always remind them - I was a writer too."
Having broken his jaw in a boxing match, Dawson was able to pull grotesque faces by pulling his jaw over his upper lip. This incident is described in the first volume of Dawson's autobiography A Clown Too Many.
His first wife, Margaret, died on 15 April 1986 from cancer. They had had three children ; Julie, Pamela and Stuart. He later married Tracy on 6 May 1989, despite worries that his showbusiness contemporaries and the public would object, as she was 17 years younger. They eventually had a daughter, Charlotte who was born on 3 October 1992.
Dawson starred in a radio sketch show Listen to Les, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 during the 1970s and 1980s. Television series in which he appeared included Sez Les, "The Dawson Watch", written by Andy Hamilton and Terry Ravenscroft, The Les Dawson Show, written by Terry Ravenscroft, Dawson's Weekly, Joker's Wild and the quiz show Blankety Blank, which he presented for some years. His final TV appearance was on the LWT Series Surprise Surprise hosted by Cilla Black, when he sang a comical rendition of "I Got You Babe" with a woman from the audience who wanted to fulfill a wish to sing with him.
Les lived with his second wife Tracy, for many years, in Lytham, Lancashire, where a commemorative statue of him was unveiled by Tracy and Charlotte live during an edition of 'The One Show" on BBC TV on 23 October 2008. The Roly Polys were there too.
Classic Les Jokes;
I said to the chemist, 'Can I have some sleeping pills for the wife?' He said, 'Why?' I said, 'She keeps waking up.'
***
I upset the wife's mother the other Guy Fawkes Night. I fell off the fire.
***
She told me it was her 30th birthday. So I put thirty candles on her cake arranged in the shape of a question mark.
***
Duck goes into the chemist's shop.
'A tube of lipsol please.'
'Certainly, that will be fifty pence.'
'Put it on my bill, please.'
***
I said to my wife, 'Treasure' - I always call her Treasure, she reminds me of something that's just been dug up.
***
She was the flabbiest stripper I've ever seen. When she ran off the stage she started her own applause.
***
People say to me, 'Cheer up, Lady Luck will smile on you one day.' By the time she smiles on me she won't have any teeth left.
***
I wouldn't say the room was small but when I talked to myself, one of us had to step outside to reply.
***
I was in a play on TV once. It was one of those suspense plays. It kept you wondering... what's on the other channels?
***
There was an old farmer from Greece
Who did terrible things to his geese
But he went too far with a budgerigar
And the parrot phoned the police.
***
I went to a small guest house. The manager said, 'You want a room with running water? I said, 'What do you think I am? A trout?'
***
I wouldn't say the house was damp but the kids went to bed with a periscope.
***
Kids are maturing so much earlier now. Every Sunday I've been taking my six-year-old over to the park to play on the swings and the slides. Last Sunday he refused to go. He said he's too old for that sort of thing. So now I'll have to play on the swings on my own.
***
I said to the wife, 'I wish you wouldn't smoke in bed.' She said, 'But a lot of women do.' I said, 'Not bacon they don't.'
***
Ours is a football marriage, we keep waiting for the other one to kick off
***
What amazes me is that so many people think showbusiness is glamorous and exciting. Believe me, it's about as glamorous as changing sheets in a bed-wetting clinic.
***
No laughs hey? I know the act smells, but I'm right on top of it and you don't hear me complain.
***
I was lying in bed the other morning playing a lament on my euphonium when the wife, who was prising her teeth out of an apple, looked back at me and said softly, 'Joey.' She calls me Joey because she always wanted a budgie. She said, 'I'm homesick.' I said, 'But precious one, this is your home.' She said, 'I know, and I'm sick of it.'
***
He drank so heavy, the only thing that grew on his grave were hops.
***
A letter came from the bank. I could tell it was from the bank as it was written on a wreath nailed to the front door.
Last edited by
Reg on Fri Oct 30, 2009 6:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.