Entertainment
City Varieties Music Hall to name auditorium in honour of Sir Ken Dodd
The Leeds venue is to honour ‘Doddy’ with a lasting tribute…
Ken Dodd, comedian, singer, actor and jam buttie expert. The Knotty Ash born star has a statue in his honour at Liverpool Lime Street station and now a theatre is also to celebrate the life and work of Sir Ken with the ‘Sir Ken Dodd Auditorium’.
In tribute to the legendary performer, and friend of the venue, Leeds City Varieties Music Hall have announced that they will be renaming their famous auditorium after Dodd who died in 2018.
As part of a regular star performer on BBC One’s The Good Old Days Ken was seen, in the telly-famous auditorium, regularly between 1953 and 1983. Also, to commemorate his legacy and the occasion City Varieties will be the first venue to screen a new documentary about the funnyman with The Real Ken Dodd – The Man I Loved at a date yet to be confirmed.
Related Feature: ATV Icon: Ken Dodd
Lady Dodd, widow of Ken and Patron of The Friends of the City Varieties:
“If he’d known then that in years to come the city of Leeds would honour him by naming this glorious auditorium after him, he’d never have believed it. A man from Lancashire being honoured in Yorkshire – the war of the roses is well and truly over!”
Kenneth Arthur Dodd was born on November 8th 1927 in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, in a 1782-built house on Thomas Lane which has been part of his family for generations. The son of Arthur, a coal merchant, and Sarah. The middle child – ‘we had one of each’ he joked – his older brother was William and his younger sister June. In 2017 as Ken approached his 90th birthday he was bestowed with a knighthood.
Established in 1865, The Leeds City Varieties Music Hall is a living, breathing homage to the days of music hall. It’s the city’s oldest working theatre. It became famous as the backdrop to The Good Old Days a music hall performance show on the BBC for 30 years with a brief revival as part of the Pebble Mill chat show in the 1990s.
