GETTING hold of Ken Dodd isn’t easy. His agent gives me his home number and assures me that although the phone will kick into voicemail, the man with the barmy barnet will pick up as soon as he realises it’s the Echo calling.

It actually ended up being a case of third time lucky, though.

Doddy explained that he hadn’t heard it ring because he had the plumbers in – which, he jokes, is what comes of still living in the same house you were born in.

He jokes a lot, does Ken. In fact our entire conversation is riddled with his trademark quickfire, genuinely funny (if old school) gags.

It’s easy to understand how he manages to keep adoring audiences rolling in the aisles, long after lesser practitioners of the making of mirth have gone home or run out of material.

“Oh, I’ve lots and lots of jokes,” he says in his unmistakable soft Scouse accent.

“But new ones spring into my mind all the time. One thing leads to another when I’m on stage, and I often find myself telling jokes that I haven’t even heard myself before!”

I’m not sure if this is another joke or not, which is sort of how the rest of our chat goes, with Ken coming across as, in his words,“a bit of a sage” one minute and a daft clown the next.

Basically he’s the last of that great dying breed, the theatrical variety act, and he knows it.

He cut his teeth (sorry Ken) hoofing it around the country, and what he doesn’t know about theatres and their audiences isn’t worth knowing.

And though he’s aware that we now live in cynical times, he seems to be doing rather well out of completely ignoring the fact.

We talk about how people are feeling a bit despondent at the moment, and I suggest this is exactly why audiences flock to get a fix of his old-style, uncomplicated and, let’s be honest, innocent humour.

“Yes, despondent, that’s the word. Folk are brassed off, they’re finding it hard and so it’s great to make them laugh.

“My sense of humour is a bit like a bride’s outfit – something old, something new, something borrowed, but never blue.”

Much is based on a simple wisdom and an understanding of what makes ordinary folk giggle.

The overwhelming feeling you get from the man who was voted The Greatest Merseysider of All Time is one of contentment and, yes, happiness, with his lot.

When asked if the constant, gruelling touring and travelling schedule gets tiring, he chuckles,“Oh yes, but it’s my life, it’s what I love doing and I’m a very lucky man. I live in Happyland.”

So what’s his secret?

“I take each day as it comes. I rest by lying in bed when I’ve got time off, and I have fun when I’m on stage. It’s like a double act, just me and the audience.

“I’m really looking forward to coming to Bournemouth; the audiences are great and I will meet up with some of the lovely friends there that I’ve made over the years… and try to remember their names!”

He first graced the stage in Bournemouth in 1957, sharing the bill with Alma Cogan, and has a deep fondness for the place.

Among the countless other things he’s done since then has been starring in movies, as Mr Mouse in a Hollywood version of Alice in Wonderland and as Yorrick in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet.

“That was amazing. I went into make-up at the crack of dawn and there on one side was Derek Jacobi, on the other Brian Blessed and right in front of me, the beautiful Julie Christie.”

But while he relishes a challenge, performing live is his raison d’etre, his very lifeblood, which explains how this octogenarian can be on stage, joshing away for hours on end, and, on more than one occasion, ladies of a certain age have sat cross-legged, desperate for a wee and crying with laughter while wondering how they’re going to get home if they miss the last bus.

In fact, it was thanks to one of these marathon shows in Bournemouth that Doddy was inadvertently responsible for the Pavilion toilets packing up under the strain, when, at the end of a particularly long act, there was a furious stampede for the ladies loos.

• Ken Dodd is at Bournemouth Pavilion Theatre on April 3 and 4.

Factfile

• Doddy really does live in Knotty Ash, in the listed Georgian farmhouse where he was born.

• In 1965 he kept the Beatles off the number one with Tears, which he recorded in the Abbey Road studios and went on to sell two million copies.

• He has a special Giggle Map of Britain, with details of what makes people laugh in different parts of the country.

• He was the first recipient of the British Comedy Society’s Living Legend Award, and has won the British Comedy Lifetime Achievement Award.

• The Cumbria-based manufacturer of his tickling sticks is presumably delighted that he goes through hundreds every year.

• Those famous teeth were the result of a childhood cycling accident.

• His partner Anne is also his manager (“She sorts out my VAT!”).