Ken Dodd on his love of singing and matchmaking advice

He is outward looking. His fascination with people is earnest and his warmth and zest to keep people entertained infectious.

Review: Rob Beckett at the Little Theatre, Leicester

A fresh-faced young man - blonde hair, big toothy grin - bounded on to the stage using the audience as his comedy. A new Ken Dodd, you might ask? Well, nearly.

Leicester Comedy Festival: Vote for legend of comedy

Jasper Carrott, Ken Dodd, Lenny Henry, Nicholas Parsons, Victoria Wood and Jennifer Saunders are on our comedy legends shortlist.

Ken Dodd: Don't call me eccentric

Ken Dodd is the last star comedian from the variety era. Now 86, he is still drawing crowds for his five-hour stage shows. Opening an exhibition about his career, he gets serious about life and laughter - and why he does not like being called eccentric.

Interview: Ken Dodd

The most famous resident of Knotty Ash is preparing to tickle Norfolk's funny bone during sold-out performances at Norwich Theatre Royal and King's Lynn Corn Exchange once again.

Comedian Jimmy Cricket 'gutted' over wellies theft

A pair of concrete wellington boots given to the comedian Jimmy Cricket by fellow funnyman Ken Dodd have been stolen from his garden in Rochdale.

Britain lost one of its most cherished talents when Les Dawson died of a heart attack in 1993, aged just 62. He had been due to record An Audience with... two weeks later; now, thanks to the wonders of technology, a version of Dawson will at last "present" the show after 20 years.

ITV promises a television first: a "staggeringly realistic" 3D holographic projection of the comic. Friends Bruce Forsyth, Terry Wogan and Ken Dodd recall their memories and, courtesy of Dawson's widow Tracy, there's treasured family-video footage of Dawson with his daughter Charlotte, who was only eight months old when her father died.

Les Dawson: An Audience with That Never Was (ITV) was a not-terribly-snappily titled tribute, timed to mark the 20th anniversary of the much-loved comic's death. It told the story of the TV special Dawson was a fortnight away from recording when he died and attempted to recreate it using a 3D projection. The hologram was billed as "staggeringly realistic" and perhaps it was if you were in the same room. On TV, it merely looked like a cut-out image of Dawson wearing an unnaturally bright blue jacket and a low hairline, standing strangely still and occasionally moving jerkily.

Instead this was a glorified clip show. Venerable figures like Bruce Forsyth, Cilla Black and Ken Dodd sat in beige hotel suites, going misty-eyed over their memories. The celebrity audience watching the hologram's performance were noticeably one notch below - more the level of Debbie McGee and Lionel Blair. And those were two of the more familiar faces. Despite the presence of Dawson's widow and daughter, who were visibly moved, this still felt like a macabre cash-in. A tribute to Dawson would have been fine without a shoddy attempt to "bring him back to life".

The show was rescued by Dawson himself, whose wit rang down the decades. He rattled out mother-in-law gags and gurned with that rubbery bulldog face. We heard how he was an accomplished musician and frustrated poet, hence his artfully off-key piano-playing and relish for florid language. Best of all, there were copious clips of his "Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Shufflebotham" routines with Roy Barraclough, the cross-dressed pair gossiping like fishwives and silently mouthing more "delicate" words, before hitching up their ample bosoms. Cissie and Ada really were three-dimensional.

Interview: Ken Dodd

Ken Dodd's been tickling comedy fans for over 60 years now.