WHILE we are cracking open the Easter Eggs you can be certain Ken Dodd will be cracking the jokes. It’s virtually tradition.

The veteran entertainer has been making his annual visit to Bournemouth since the late 1950’s but this was his first as ‘Sir’ Ken Dodd, just weeks after being knighted for his services to comedy and charity.

And the accolade was certainly long overdue for the unashamedly stage-truck star who has been touring continually, dispensing “tickle tonic” at virtually every theatre in the land over the last six decades

Incredibly, even as he approaches his 90th birthday (in November), the audience that greeted him was not just those of a certain age, to quote Doddy, “wearing 50 shades of beige” but many new younger fans still discovering his extraordinary talent.

Remarkably, even after his whirlwind start to the year, Ken had added lots of new fresh material to this show and cut back on some of the tried and tested routines.

He admitted to forgetting some of the gags but still kept the audience hanging on his every word and there was plenty of banter and audience interaction as he bounced his jokes off couples in the front row or lead the entire room in a singalong.

“Does your husband believe in safe sex?” he asked one lady, adding, “has he a handrail around the bed?”. There were the quick double-entendres and innuendos: “How do you get a fat girl into bed…A piece of cake!”, and then there were the wonderful longer story-telling jokes with some being semi-autobiographical.

Of course the length of Ken’s shows is legendary - often lasting five hours and long after midnight: indeed, the Merseyside comic landed himself in the Guinness book of World records when he famously told 1,500 jokes in three and a half hours – worked out at “seven titters per minute”.

here were references to this as he joked about boys being known to grow out of their short trousers during his show, and he expected landladies around Bournemouth would be bemoaning the skin on the Cocoa as they wondered what had become of us and nursing homes would be reporting us missing! But even though he quipped about letting us experience a hostage situation the show was not as long as usual and we were ‘released’ well before midnight!

Ken has managed to pace the show too by interspersing his act with a number of his regular variety acts, including Bournemouth's brilliant Andy Eastwood who sang and played banjo, guitar, violin and ukulele, as well as singer and pianist Sibie Jones and magic act Amethyst.

And, of course, Doddy always includes his ventriloquism act – the act that first brought him into entertainment, as he introduced Dickey Mint. His own musical input is as high as it’s ever been, albeit with plenty of audience support, singing songs that mix both comedy and pathos, from his hits including Tears for Souvenirs and Absent Friends to his joyful signature tune Happiness.

But it was his performance of My Thanks to You, sung sitting on a stool towards the end of the show where he genuinely thanked his fans for everything that really tugged at the heart strings. “People ask why I stay on stage so long and you know why,” said Ken, “because I fall in love with you…we are like family now.”

The curtain fell as everyone was up on their feet singing and clapping along to ‘Happiness” with Ken waving his tickling sticks in the air. Despite his long journey from Knotty Ash and lengthy show Ken was not planning to put his feet up on Easter Sunday but perform all over again at Frome in Somerset!