Les would have to be partial to a takeaway, since my
culinary skills are somewhat limited. The person I’ve chosen would, I
think, be happy at the prospect of joining me for a portion of cod, chips
and mushy peas, just about the only takeaway option for both of us in
our formative years. When I was born, he would have been about 16
and living a mile and a half down the Rochdale Road. Who was he? Les
Dawson, one of Britain’s best loved comics of the 70s and 80s. He was
funny, but had other talents too. He died in 1993, aged 62.

Why would I like to meet him? For a start, I know he’d make me
laugh. We also had things in common. We were both only children, had
an interest in writing, and lived in adjacent districts which were two of
Manchester’s poorest. Success didn’t come easily to Les. He was about
40 before he became a successful comedian, and had to earn a living in
a variety of jobs before he got his break. I don’t know much about his
early life and would like to know more. I do know his Dad was a
bricklayer, money was tight, and the family had to do more than one
moonlight flit to avoid the rent man. His Mum was of Irish descent, and
her ancestors had, quite possibly, left Ireland in the 1840s to avoid the
potato famine.

One of the areas many of these Irish people settled in was
Angel Meadow (a misnomer if ever there was one), it was described by
Friedrich Engels as “Hell on Earth“. The slum conditions that these
people endured were as bad as any in Britain, and was used by Engels
in, “The condition of the English working class“. Angel Meadow
was within half a mile of where Les lived, and I wonder if he knew
anything about it while he was growing up. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t till
I was in my 20s. In the latter part of the 19^th century, 40,000 paupers
from Angel Meadow were buried in a pit with coffins piled on top
of each other. As a final ignominy, a lot of the bodies were dug up to
make way for one of the railways to be built from Manchester to the
north. God knows how long it was before they were reburied.

There were differences between Les and me, as well as similarities. I left school at 18 and went into Higher Education; Les left at14 and went straight to work. He remembers a teacher telling his classmates, “Les Dawson has the talent to become a successful writer“.

Les described this comment as lifechanging. He wrote several
books in his later years, and was employed as a journalist on a local
newspaper for a short time. At school he wanted to be “one of the lads”
(didn’t we all), and so kept his writing and love of words to himself.
To try to make it as a writer, he moved to Paris. The move didn’t work from a writing point of view, and to support himself, he played piano in dodgy clubs and even a brothel.

Though a talented pianist, he started playing the wrong notes now and again. The audiences loved it and roared with laughter. This was the start of his comedy career, and he added jokes to the music. I’d love to ask him how he learned to play
the piano, I very much doubt there was any spare money to pay for lessons when he was a kid.

Les’s humour wasn’t politically correct, or you could say it was of
its time . One of his specialities was “ mother-in-law jokes”. One favourite is:

“ I always knew when the mother-in-law was coming to
stay – our mice started throwing themselves on the traps.”

Sometimes he incorporated sophisticated language into
jokes, only to finish with a very different punch line. For example:

“In awe I watched the waxing moon ride across the
zenith of the heavens, like an ambered chariot, towards the ebony void
of infinite space wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter and Mars hang,
forever festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I looked at all this, I
thought- “I must put a roof on this toilet “

Les had other specialities which he developed over the years. He was very good at gurning (contorting his face into quite ugly expressions). Les’s face was definitely of the “lived in” variety, probably helped by the boxing he did in his youth.

Two of the titles given to Manchester over the years were
“ Cottonopolis” and “The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution”, so the
landscape Thal Les and I grew up in was full of mills, factories and the
tall chimneys that went with them. Working conditions in these places
was appalling. It was dusty, monotonous, noisy and dangerous, with
little or no regard for health and safety. The noise from the looms was so
great that normal conversation was impossible, and deafness was an
occupational hazard. As a consequence, the women who operated the
looms, learned to communicate by lipreading. Les used this in one of
his most famous sketches ,which he did with his sidekick, Roy
Barraclough.

The two of them played Cissie and Ada, two late middle-
aged ladies who liked putting the world to rights, and loved a bit of
gossip and scandal to spice things up a bit. Medical discussions were
a speciality of theirs. Most of their communication was normal, that
is speaking out loud, but if the conversation turned to a neighbour who
was playing away with somebody else’s partner, or to medical problems
(especially women’s problems “down below “). They mouthed the words
instead of speaking them out loud. Add a few facial expressions, the
pursing of lips, heaving of bosoms a few malapropisms and the result
was very funny. Perhaps the most memorable malapropism was the
word “hysterectomy “ being replaced by “hysterical rectory”.

I’d have loved to spend time with Les so could find out about his
early life, how he developed his musical talent and how his life was the
same or different to my own. He was a man from very humble beginnings
who had to struggle for everything he achieved, and, against the odds,
he accomplished an awful lot.

Addendum

If you want more Les Dawson jokes go to TOP 25 QUOTES BY LES DAWSON | A-Z Quotes

Alf Orton