Leslie Dawson was an English comedian, actor, writer, and presenter, who is best remembered for his deadpan style, curmudgeonly persona and jokes about his mother-in-law and wife.
21 Facts About Les Dawson
2.
Les Dawson was born in Collyhurst, Manchester, on 2 February 1931, the only child of bricklayer Leslie Dawson and Julia Nolan who was of Irish descent.
3.
Les Dawson worked briefly as a journalist on the Bury Times.
4.
Early in life, Dawson wrote poetry and kept it secret.
5.
Les Dawson claimed in his autobiography that he began entertaining as a pianist in a Parisian brothel.
6.
Les Dawson made his television debut on the talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1967 and worked as a comic on British television for the rest of his life.
7.
Les Dawson made many appearances on BBC Television's variety show, The Good Old Days in the 1970s and 1980s.
8.
Les Dawson co-hosted Prince Edward's charity television special The Grand Knockout Tournament in 1987.
9.
In 1991, Les Dawson starred in the BBC television production of Nona, an adaptation of the 1977 play La Nona by Roberto Cossa for the Performance series.
10.
Les Dawson was initiated into the famous show business fraternity, the Grand Order of Water Rats and served as that order's "King Rat" in 1985.
11.
The characters were based on those Les Dawson knew in real life.
12.
Les Dawson explained that this mouthing of words was a habit of Lancashire millworkers communicating over the loud noise of looms, then resorted to in daily life for indelicate subjects.
13.
Les Dawson was portly and often dressed in John Bull costume.
14.
Les Dawson introduced to his BBC television shows a dancing group of fat ladies called the Roly Polys.
15.
Les Dawson was a talented pianist but developed a gag in which he played a familiar piece such as Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and then introduced hideously wrong notes without appearing to realise, smiling unctuously and relishing the accuracy and soul of his own performance.
16.
Les Dawson was married to his first wife, Margaret, from 25 June 1960 until her death on 15 April 1986 from cancer.
17.
Les Dawson nearly died in February 1985 from a failing prostate gland, complicated by blood poisoning.
18.
Les Dawson married his second wife, Tracy Roper, on 6 May 1989; she was 17 years younger.
19.
Les Dawson died suddenly, aged 62, on 10 June 1993 from a heart attack during treatment for a heart complaint at St Joseph's Hospital in Manchester.
20.
On 23 October 2008,15 years after his death, a bronze statue by Graham Ibbeson was unveiled by his widow Tracy and daughter Charlotte in the ornamental gardens next to the pier in St Anne's-on-Sea, Lancashire, where Les Dawson lived for many years.
21.
The programme featured a Pepper's ghost projection of Les Dawson, presenting content for a 1993 edition of An Audience with.