The famous ‘bad piano playing’ part of the great comic’s act started in our city. But – asks our comedy legend correspondent Angus Young – which one?

Like most legends, there are a few versions of the story of how Les Dawson started on his journey to become one of Britain’s best-known comedians. The man himself told it to Michael Parkinson on the latter’s hugely-popular chat show in 1974. Still available to watch on YouTube, Dawson recalls a booking in Hull when he was still performing as a struggling pianist and singer in the late 1950s. “I was having a terrible time. I was dying everywhere. It was that bad they were calling me the Fourth Prophet. I got this booking in Hull. It was a fishermen’ s club. They came straight from the trawlers with barb and salt caked on their faces and with a sock full of money. They sat there and drank themselves into oblivion. An act was superfluous, they didn’t need an act and I was there, dying a death, night after night.

“One terrible night they were letting bottles go and pennies were being thrown. They were shaking the bottles and letting the tops off, it was like an alcoholic El Alamein. It got to the Thursday and I couldn’t face it any more so I went to a pub in The Land of Green Ginger and got stoned. I went back and I couldn’t get off the piano. This makeshift curtain opened on this podium and I couldn’t get off. So I said: ‘It’s very nice in here, it’s a superbly decorated kipper factory’ and suddenly I was getting laughs.”

The more he ad-libbed and fired off deadpan jokes about his miserable life, the more the crowd loved it. Despite being drunk, Dawson had invented what became his trademark comedic style. But where did all this happen?

We’re talking about 1956 here so it’s a long time ago and there are few remaining eye-witnesses still around to confirm things. His trip to The Land of Green Ginger almost certainly involved a pint or three in The George Hotel. As for the club, debate continues to rage over which venue was actually involved.

One theory places the action in the old Stevedores and Dockers Club in Posterngate. However, this contradicts Dawson’s own story of performing in a fishermens’ club. Many point to the West Dock Club in West Dock Avenue or the Phoenix Club in Hessle Road. Both are sadly no longer with us. There are also a few votes for the old Humber St. Andrew’s Club in Anlaby Road.

Local author Mike Ullyatt was Hull comedian Norman Collier’s biographer. He said: “Norman was a big friend of Les and he told me that Les confirmed it was the West Dock Club where it all started for him. Myths have it that it was at practically every club down Hessle Road.”

However, the current consensus is that Dawson’s encounter with an audience of trawlermen took place in another former Hessle Road social club – The Empress. (A location confirmed by Dawson’s mate, Hull playwright Alan Plater – Ed.) If true, the venue is still there as a pub, albeit now operating as The New Empress having previously been known as The Bosun. All that’s missing is a blue plaque commemorating its rightful place in British comedy history.

Angus Young