The Joke That Made Parkinson Lose It | Les Dawson | Parkinson on BBC

Les Dawson was dying on stage every night in a fisherman's club in Hove. The audience came straight from the trawlers, drank themselves into oblivion and had absolutely no need of an act. One terrible night, unable to get off the piano and too drunk to care, he turned on them. They laughed. He had accidentally found his style.

In this conversation with Michael Parkinson, Dawson talks about selling vacuum cleaners to people who felt sorry for him, driving three hours through a blizzard to sell a man in Kendal exactly three pieces of plastic, and going to Paris to become a writer in a room so small that when he turned off the light he was in bed before it was dark. To make ends meet he played piano in a brothel. He later discovered his job was to get rid of the customers.

He also talks about W.C. Fields, Rob Wilton, and why Northern comedy is rooted in adversity. Then he does his mother-in-law.

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