Speaking to comedy writer Jason Hazeley, author Louis Barfe discusses his definitive biography of one of the most enduring figures of British comedy, the eccentric genius Ken Dodd.

In what is the first serious biographical assessment of the comedian since his death last year, Barfe argues that Dodd was the last of the great variety acts, a creator of superbly absurd vulgarity who was at his best not on the small screen but on stage, where his act – ‘a rolling boil of cumulative humour’ that stretched into the wee small hours of the morning – delighted his audiences across seven decades.