Les Dawson
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Les Dawson (2 February 1931, Collyhurst, Manchester, Lancashire - 10 June 1993) was a popular English comedian, known for his deadpan style and curmudgeonly persona, and famous for jokes about his mother-in-law and wife.
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[edit] Life and career
Raised in the Collyhurst district of Manchester, 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, 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. 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 whispered, 'She's having woman's troubles.' These female characters were based on those Les Dawson knew in real life. 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. 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.
Dawson's humour was world weary, lugubrious, earthy, but never cruel or coarse, and he was as popular with female as with male audiences, and genuinely loved by the British public.
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.
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 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.[citation needed]
His first wife, Meg, died on 15 April 1986 from cancer. He later married Tracey on 6 May 1989, despite worries that his showbusiness contempararies and the public would object, she being much younger. They eventually had a daughter, Charlotte who was born on 3 October 1992.
Dawson starred in a radio sketch show Listen to Les during the 1970s and 1980s. Television series in which he appeared included Sez Les, "The Dawson Watch", The Les Dawson Show, 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.
[edit] Death
In 1993, during a check-up at a hospital in Whalley Range, Manchester, Dawson died after suffering from a heart attack.
[edit] Trivia
- In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
[edit] Books
- A Clown Too Many (autobiography, 1986)
- No Tears for a Clown
- Hitler Was My Mother-in-Law
- Well Fared, My Lovely
- Come Back with the Wind
- The Blade and the Passion
- Card for the Clubs
- Malady Lingers on and Other Great Groaners
- Les Dawson's Lancashire
- A Time Before Genesis
- Les Dawson Gives Up
- Cosmo Smallpiece Guide to Male Liberation
[edit] External links
- Tribute website Run by his widow Tracy Dawson, and their good friend and colleague Mo Moreland
- Fan websitea few good quotes from Les Dawson here
