"Les Dawson (2 February 1931 - 10 June 1993) was a popular Lancashire comedian, known for his deadpan style. Dawson was a curmudgeon, famous for jokes about his mother-in-law and his wife.
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 Sidebottom who, having worked in a mill in their youth, spoke some words aloud and mouthed others--particularly those pertaining to bodily functions and sex; they also repeatedly pushed up their bosoms, in pantomime dame style, an act copied faithfully from his hero, Norman Evans. Dawson's humour, though earthy, was seldom coarse, and he was as popular with female as with male audiences."
A very funny man and in reality he could play the piano really well. Most of this record is comedy routines but I have extracted two "musical" interludes for your enjoyment, or not as the case may be! A bargain at 49p!
Les Dawson - Me and My Girl
Les Dawson - My Blue Heaven
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2 comments:
I never 'got' Les Dawson. Very clever of course with all that deliberately bad piano playing but he just didn't make me laugh. Miserable old git aren't I?
We all have our "breaking point" I guess! I know he's not everyones cup of cha. All those awful mother-in-law jokes became what so called "alternative" comedians railed against and so we have the Ben Eltons, Comic Strip, Victoria Wood, Reeves and Mortimer etc. as a polar opposite to all that un- PC kinda thing. Now it has become the mainstream and taken over the telly with those dull predictable sit-coms and Elton with his terrible west end musicals etc. It all goes round in a big circle!
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