Comedy gold – Les Dawson

Title: The Best of Les Dawson.

Year: Various, 1970s and 80s.

The set-up: It is sometimes said – and said quite often underneath these articles – that something or someone just is or isn't funny. Les Dawson did not agree. In 1974, he asked Michael Parkinson: "How can you analyse what is funny? What's funny to one isn't funny to another … What's funny to you is a personal thing." It's ironic, because Dawson himself was perhaps as close to being "just funny" as human beings get.

First, there was the physique: stout but upright, like a provincial mayor. Then there's that face: absurdly mobile, with lips almost capacious enough for the rest of it to hide in. The accent: gruff Lancastrian – perhaps an ancestor of Peter Kay's – the perfect blunt instrument for bathetic punchlines. He was magnificent with words as well, always ready with fresh feats of intricate articulacy, yet he was genuine with it, and widely liked. He may have hired others such as Terry Ravenscroft and Barry Cryer to write for him, but as a performer Dawson was the comic attributes of a whole variety show bound together in one man.

And yet the funniest aspect of this funny man was that he dreamed of higher things. When young, he travelled to Paris to lead the life of a struggling writer (and managed the struggling part). While there, to make ends meet, he played the piano (anther passion for which he'd had great plans) and later, not enjoying it, found his grumbling and wrong notes provoked a better reaction than anything else he did. From there grew a career as one of the most loved comics on British television. He was the fat chap from the north who wore dinner jackets and told mother-in-law jokes while forever trying and failing to raise the tone. Even in those days he continued writing poetry, and wrote many novels.

Funny how? Dawson's comedy divides into two compartments: the monologues and music-hall routines he began with, and later the playlets and sketches he performed on television. The latter stuff, which includes his famous Cissie and Ada drag act with Roy Barraclough, has not aged very well (although I'm sure it's still well loved). The standup, on the other hand, where Dawson himself can be at the heart of things, remains full of wit and charm. It made him, in a meagre field, one of the great game-show hosts during his days presiding over Blankety Blank.

And always the premise is the same: Dawson is unhappy, he doesn't want the life he's got, so he puts his wasted talent into his complaints. For instance: "I'd like to thank the BBC for allowing me to work here. And I'd like to thank the wife and kids for making it necessary." Or: "I've just had some bad news. Tomorrow is the mother in law's funeral. And she's cancelled it." Wherever there is glamour, aspiration, refinement, affection or any other noble feeling, he brings a great splat of dun reality.

"It's aggression as a form of defence," he also told Parkinson, when asked to describe his style. It was revenge as well. Better to laugh back at life, since it seemed determined to laugh at him.

Comic cousins: Frankie Howerd, Mick Miller, Lily Savage, Morecambe and Wise, Peter Kay.

Steal this: "I went to the doctor last week. I said: 'Can I have some sleeping pills for the wife?' He said: 'Why?' I said: 'She's woke up.'"