05.08.2025
The giggle map of the UK: in comedy, location matters
The Observer: Robert Chalmers: May 2025
Ken Dodd, a Liverpudlian, famously tailored his jokes for regional
audiences, but do today’s entertainers still find their acts go down
differently in Bath or Leeds, or Glasgow?
Do areas still differ in the kind of welcome that they extend to
visiting performers? It’s a question I began to ponder last autumn when
I travelled on several legs of the UK and Irish tour by Elvis Costello,
who is my main – well OK, my only – real friend in the music business.
When the house lights come up to indicate the end of a show, Costello is
fond of having the theatre PA play Where’s Me Shirt, a 1965 track by
the late Ken Dodd. It’s a grotesquely memorable anthem which – while
popular at the time, and a nod to Costello’s Liverpool roots – is only
marginally less effective than CS gas in its ability to drive stragglers
towards the exits.
Last autumn, after his show at the Regent theatre in
Ipswich, the singer gave me a ride home to north London. We’d barely
joined the A12 when the conversation turned to Ken Dodd. Around the
time of 9/11, I spent a fortnight following Dodd on a tour that took in
Eastbourne, Worthing, Llandudno, Wrexham, Skegness, Dudley and Whitley
Bay. I was in New Brighton with our mutual friend, the playwright Alan
Bleasdale, I told Costello, when the comedian eventually sat down to
talk at length.