Les Dawson

Leslie Dawson was born on 2 February 1931 in Collyhurst, a working-class district of north Manchester, and grew up in a household where humour was both defence and currency. His father was a bricklayer, his mother a sharp-tongued woman whose wit would later feed his most famous routines. After leaving school, Dawson worked in the parcels department of the Manchester Co-op, briefly as a journalist on the Bury Times, and as an apprentice electrician before being called up for National Service, trying out jokes in the working men's clubs of Lancashire whenever he could find a stage.

For years Dawson died on stage. He changed his name, changed his act, and even considered giving up comedy until he stopped trying to be a slick, polished entertainer and started presenting himself as the world-weary, pessimistic northerner he really was. His national breakthrough came with Opportunity Knocks in 1967, followed by wider exposure on Granada's The Comedians from 1971, where his deadpan mother-in-law monologues and anti-piano recitals made him one of the most popular faces on British television.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s Dawson was a fixture of light entertainment: fronting The Les Dawson Show for the BBC, hosting the chaotic BBC quiz Blankety Blank, and writing bestselling books of jokes and memoirs. He was a gifted pianist — he could play fluently and seriously — but audiences loved him more for the elaborate pretence that he could not. The wrong notes, the pained grimaces, and the triumphant recovery were as precisely timed as any concert performance.

Dawson's health was never robust. A heavy smoker and famously fond of food, he nearly died in February 1985 from a failing prostate gland complicated by blood poisoning, and on 3 September 1988 he suffered a heart attack in Blackpool and spent nine days in hospital. On 10 June 1993, aged 62, he died suddenly from a heart attack while receiving treatment for a heart complaint at St Joseph's Hospital in Manchester. His funeral was one of the largest the north of England had seen for a comedian, and his influence lives on in every stand-up who turns domestic gloom into shared joy.