Les Dawson – English iconic Comic, Writer and Actor
Les Dawson is one of England’s greatest icons and is recognised worldwide as one of the funniest comedians of the 20th Century. I thought it would be interesting to write the story of this famous icon from his birth on on 2nd February 1931 and his place of birth at Collyhurst, Manchester, England to his present day status as a great English Icon. I recommend to any fan of comedy, please go out and by one of his many DVD’s and see what a great comic Les Dawson was.
Raised in the Collyhurst district of Manchester. Les Dawson began his entertainment career as a pianist in a Parisian brothel (according to his entertaining but factually unreliable autobiography). 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’”), he was to find that he got laughs by playing wrong notes and complaining to the audience. He made his television debut on the talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1967 and became a prominent comic on British television for the rest of his life.
His most characteristic routines featured Roy Barraclough and Dawson as two elderly women, Cisse 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. At one time, 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 mill workers 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.
Les Dawson was of portly build and often dressed in the traditional ‘John Bull’ of England costume. He introduced to his BBC television 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 (yet not to the extent of destroying the identity of the tune) 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.
Les 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 backstage joking with some cleaning women and making them laugh.
Before his fame Dawson wrote poetry and kept it secret. It was not expected that someone of his working class background would harbour such literary ambitions. In a BBC TV documentary about his life, he spoke of his love for some canonical figures in English literature, in particular the 19th Century essayist 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 his 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, whom he married on 25 June 1960, 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 show business contemporaries and the public would object, as she was 17 years younger. They 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 in the 1970s and 1980s. Television series in which he appeared included Sez Les for Yorkshire Television, The Dawson Watch for the BBC, written by Andy Hamilton and Terry Ravenscroft, The Les Dawson Show, written by Terry Ravenscroft, Dawson’s Weekly, Jokers Wild (1969-73) 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.
Dawson was a heavy smoker and drinker throughout his adult life. On 10 June 1993, during a check-up at a hospital in Whalley Range, Manchester, Les Dawson died suddenly after suffering a heart attack. Many comedians and other celebrities attended a memorial service for him at Westminster Abbey on 24 February 1994.
On 23 October 2008, the fifteenth anniversary of his death, a bronze statue of Dawson, by sculptor Graham Ibbeson, was unveiled by his widow Tracy and daughter Charlotte. The statue stands in the ornamental gardens next to St Anne’s Pier, in Lytham St Anne’s, Lancashire where Dawson had lived for many years.
Please visit my Funny Animal Art Prints Collection @ http://www.fabprints.com
My other website is called Directory of British Icons: http://fabprints.webs.com
The Chinese call Britain ‘The Island of Hero’s’ which I think sums up what we British are all about. We British are inquisitive and competitive and are always looking over the horizon to the next adventure and discovery.
Copyright © 2010 Paul Hussey. All Rights Reserved.
About the Author
My family tree has been traced back to the early Kings of England from the 7th Century AD. I am also a direct descendent of Sir Christopher Wren which has given me an interest in English History which is great fun to research.
I have recently decided to write articles on my favourite subjects: English Sports, English History, English Icons, English Discoveries and English Inventions. At present I have written over 100 articles which I call “An Englishman’s Favourite Bits Of England” in various Volumes. Please visit my fun Blogs page http://Bloggs.Resourcez.Com where I have listed all my articles to date.
Copyright © 2010 Paul Hussey. All Rights Reserved.
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