By Elliott West
“I said to the chemist, ‘Can I have some sleeping pills for the wife?’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘She keeps waking up”.
Les Dawson joke.
Introduction
Possessing funny bones is a gift, the art of captivating an audience and reducing them to fits of laughter. Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe, Frankie Howerd, Benny Hill and Dick Emery had it but one comedian who could bring on the giggles with one crease of his face was Les Dawson. One of the few men who could mock the wife or mother-in-law and live to survive the joke. Someone who could play the piano badly and brilliantly could pass for a woman and was a talented author and poet. Dawson’s comedy put a sheen on the struggles and strains of industrial Manchester, beautifully crafted, and woven together with mastery. However long the joke ended with a powerful punchline with words juggled and adjusted to fit perfectly into the jigsaw of the gag.
Finding Funnydom
Like so many who tasted fame, Les had to dream of it before it materialised. Born into a working-class background in Collyhurst in 1931, Dawson was the son of Julie and Leslie. His father was a building labourer and wanted his son to become a prized boxer but the youthful Les wasn’t keen on the idea. Leaving school at 14, Dawson wanted to become a journalist or writer. A human sponge who loved to soak up English language and prose. Yet to get there, you have to start at the bottom of the pile and Les wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. His first job was working with the Co-Op in the drapery department and then he moved on to becoming an apprentice electrician. Careers that were interrupted by his call-up for National Service in 1949, training at Catterick before moving to Germany to serve with the Queen’s Bay 2nd Dragoon Guards.
The Parisian Touch
Shortly after being demobbed, Les moved to Paris to pursue a writing career. However, despite the rich sense of culture that Paris has, Dawson struggled to get his beloved project off the ground and so had to find a way to make ends meet. Instead, he worked as a pianist in what he initially thought was a bar but it turned out it was a French brothel. Although a den of iniquity and vice, it was somewhere where Les fitted in. He recalls in his diaries from this time when he was in his twenties in the 1950s how he used to swoon when he saw the beautiful barmaid, Emerald and how the Madam, Madam Gaudin who worked there, wore beautiful dresses and would come over to the piano and hum along to the music he was playing. A woman who spent years plying her trade but was now too old, becoming instead the ringleader and money taker.
This period of Les’s life is steeped in mystery. Apart from a few diary entries and black-and-white photographs of Dawson at the piano, it is not clear whether he was happy or how long he spent in Paris, although it was thought to be quite a while. Perhaps when the Francs dried up and turned to Centimes, Les decided that enough was enough and it was time to return to Blighty. It was time to roll up his sleeves again and graft. He became an insurance salesman and later was a door-to-door salesman for Hoover, selling hoovers and washing machines.
Finding your Footing
At 23, Les Dawson was passing a billboard that was advertising for acts to audition for Max Wall at the Manchester Hippodrome. He applied and passed the audition. He then moved to London where he was promoted by Wall but it was a path that would again end in disappointment, failing to get a big enough foot through the door to make his big break. He decided to return to Manchester and try his hand at the club circuit. A gig where you either got the laugh or were showered in beer and pelted with anything the audience could lay their hands on. Fortunately, his crowd warmed to his deadpan humour, a mix of woe and glee. A type of humour that was straight out of the Manchester terrace house where the front step was swept every day with pride, a fridge was a thing of the future and you had to brave the elements to use the outside toilet at the bottom of the garden.
Yet in any hardship, humour is an escape to forget the woes. So too did Dawson have to learn life the hard way. Despite appearances on radio shows such as “Worker’s Playtime”, and “Midday Music Hall”, and television appearances with Bernie Winters for ABC television and Comedy Bandbox, he wasn’t an overnight success. Les was 36 and struggling to feed his family. On the brink of giving up, an opportunity came out of the blue.
The Break
His first wife Meg persuaded him to audition for Opportunity Knocks, presented by Hughie Green. It was an appearance that went down a storm and the clapometer went off the scale. Straight off this hit, Dawson asked to appear on the ITV show, “Blackpool Night Out” and what a success that was. The applause reverberated around the studio. This would lead to numerous television and radio appearances and a call to appear in pantomime where he mastered the pantomime dame. His first appearance was a Christmas run in Doncaster.
He then had a run of his shows, Sez Lez 1969-1976, Dawson and Friends 1977 and the Les Dawson Show 1978-1989. He took over as the host of Blankety Blank from Terry Wogan in 1984 to 1990 and had his radio show on Radio 2, Listen to Les in the 1970s and 1980s. He also appeared on The Good Old Days, The Grand Knockout in 1987 and turned down the part of Victor Meldrew in One Foot in the Grave that was taken up by Richard Wilson. A subject of This Is Your Life in 1971, he also appeared as Nona in the BBC drama about a 100-year-old compulsive eater based on the play La Nona by Roberto Cossa. His final appearance came on an episode of Surprise Surprise where he sang “ I Got You Babe” with a member of the audience. The programme was aired shortly after he died in 1993.
Typically Les
Les Dawson found his trademark gurn after breaking his jaw in a boxing match. A heavy smoker who typically could easily smoke 50 cigarettes a day accompanied by a bottle of whisky, was a master of the whispered joke to the camera through pursed lips and didn’t look out of place wearing rollers, a head scarf and crinkly stockings when performing as Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Shufflebotham with Roy Barraclough. A skit based on the comedy of Norman Evans. Mannerisms and personalities that Les based on women that he had grown up with. Women who communicated through whispers and gestures to overcome the loud din of the Lancashire cotton looms. Hoisting and adjusting their breasts as they went.
Knowing Les
I have a connection with Les Dawson as my Great Uncle Tommy Scott was his friend and after retiring from his variety act, Jo, Jac and Joni managed The Roly Polys, the plus-sized ladies who perform Ed with Les on television and stage. A devoted father who had the last of his four children Charlotte with his second wife Tracy, loved nothing more than to play his part as a devoted father. Tracy was born in 1992 and was only a baby when her father died after suffering a second heart attack in 1993, aged 62. A talented author who wrote a number of books including an unpublished story of love and mystery, entitled An Echo of Shadows that was written under the pseudonym Maria Brett-Cooper. A 100-page novel that was discovered by his daughter Charlotte in 2014.
Books written by Les Dawson
Fiction:
- Card for the Clubs (1974)
- The Spy Who Came… (1976)
- Cosmo Smallpiece Guide to Male Liberation (1979)
- The Amy Pluckett Letters (1982) / Hitler Was My Mother-in-Law (1984)*
- A Time Before Genesis (1986)
- Come Back with the Wind (1990)
- Well Fared, My Lovely (1991)
- The Blade and the Passion (1994)
Non-Fiction:
- Les Dawson’s Lancashire (1983)
- A Clown Too Many (autobiography, 1986)
- No Tears for the Clown (autobiography, 1992)
- Malady Lingers on and Other Great Groaners
- Les Dawson Gives Up
- The Les Dawson Joke Book
- Les Dawson’s Secret Notebooks
