If not the best, then certainly on a par with anyone else. Only saw him once - show over-ran by an hour and 40 minutes. My sides ached for a week. And his jokes were of the 'silly' variety, yet still we laughed. "My father always knew I was going to be a comedian. When I was born , he took one look at me and said, "Is this a joke?".
Just had to Google him and have found a few of his daft, but brilliant, jokes.
"The man who invented Cat's Eyes got the idea when he saw the eyes of a cat in his headlights. Had it been going the other way, he would have invented the pencil sharpener."
"It turns out that if you bang two halves of a horse together, it doesn't make the sound of a coconut."
"I'm a sex symbol for women who don't care."
Ha! I remember those jokes Ken. Once when I went to see him, he made a joke about sex (but of course being Ken Dodd it was anything but rude) and I laughed out loud at his silliness and he pointed to me and said 'there's a lady over there who knows what I'm talking about, don't you madam.' I was mortified.
He was interviewed quite regularly on both Granada Reports and BBC Northwest and he could never be serious for more than a few seconds. I remember one occasion where Lucy Meacock was laughing so much, she couldn't read the auto-cue and her male colleague had to come to her rescue. And you could just about hear Doddy still cracking jokes off camera.
If it's late and you don't know what time it is, go outside and start banging on a set of drums. Someone will open a window and shout 'who's that playing drums at 3 o' clock in the morning'??