Les Dawson
English comedian (1931-1993)
Leslie Dawson (2 February 1931 – 10 June 1993) was an English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and pianist. He was known for his deadpan style, curmudgeonly persona, musical routines, and jokes about his mother-in-law and wife.
Early life
Les Dawson was born in Collyhurst, Manchester, on 2 February 1931, the only child of bricklayer Leslie Dawson (2 August 1905 – 10 April 1970) and Julia Nolan (14 January 1908 – 29 September 1957), who was of Irish descent. His first job was in the parcels department of the Manchester Co-op. He worked briefly as a journalist on the Bury Times. and then as an apprentice electrician, before being called up for National Service, first at Catterick Garrison, Yorkshire in 1949, furthered in Germany with the 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays).
Early career
Dawson moved to Paris to find inspiration as a writer, to earn money to live, he found work as a pianist in a brothel. Making a living as a pianist evolved into comedy, when he got laughs from deliberately bad piano-playing by playing "all the wrong notes in exactly the right order" At the age of 36, he became disillusioned with show business and was considering an alternative career, until he appeared on Hughie Green's talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1967.
Comedy career
Television series in which he appeared included the panel game Jokers Wild (1969–73) hosted by Barry Cryer, Sez Les (1969–76) and Dawson's Weekly (1975), all for Yorkshire Television. After joining the BBC, his TV projects were The Dawson Watch (1979–80), written by Andy Hamilton and Terry Ravenscroft, The Les Dawson Show (1978–89), written by Terry Ravenscroft, and the quiz show Blankety Blank, which he presented from 1984 until its cancellation in 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Les Dawson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.