Ken Dodd was a liverpool legend and he is still making heroic gestures via his charitable foundation
Comedian and Liverpool legend Sir Ken Dodd has made a huge wave of secret charity donations totalling £3m since his death in 2018.
The Ken Dodd Charitable Foundation has handed out countless financial gifts to good causes since his passing, almost half a million every year since 2019. And a charity in his name plans to keep on giving the money away after he left behind millions more when he passed away.
In a new BBC documentary his widow Lady Anne Dodd reveals she is carrying on Ken’s legacy to donate to charity and also plans to establish a museum in his honour.
She tells the programme: “He had set up this foundation but not done much particularly as he was busy doing shows and everything. But I was in a position where I could. Of course it is something to put your energies into. People approach you and I am busy as I have ever been. I am getting older but I have got people to help.”
She added: “I have just donated money to the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital where Ken was treated and they have used the money to buy a machine which works out if a patient with a heart condition should have chemotherapy.
“They said the machine was so good they would like another so I rang them back and bought them one. It is so easy to give money away and I have met so many wonderful people doing it. Ken worked hard for it. We had nice holidays but we had an everyday life.
“Ken never craved the trappings of wealth. He never wanted a Bentley or a house abroad. He was very much the same as he always was. Fame never changed him.”
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Sir Ken was famous for his marathon stand-up shows which would go on for many hours along with his Diddy Men and the tickling stick. In 2021, Lady Anne told how her husband had left behind a £27.2 million fortune from his 63-year career in show business and now much of that money is being put to good use.
But in 1989 Sir Ken had faced the possibility of a fall from grace when he was charged with eight counts of tax fraud spanning 15 years and involving more than £800,000.
However after a 23 day trial he was later acquitted, but not before the court heard a range of stories about his eccentricity, including hiding more than £300,000 of cash in wardrobes, cupboards and under stairs.
Speaking briefly about the case in the BBC documentary, Anne said: “People laughed once it was over. He was careful never to make fun of them (HMRC) but he used it to make fun of the situation. Everybody gets some sort of horror in their lifetime.”
Ken died in March 2018 after he had recently been released from hospital after six weeks of treatment for a chest infection.
He married Anne, his partner of 40 years, shortly before his death at their house, in the Liverpool suburb of Knotty Ash.
At the time Sir Paul McCartney tweeted a picture of Sir Ken with The Beatles, saying he was “a champion of his home city and comedy”.
Anne also hopes to open a museum in 2027 when Ken would have been 100 and would like it to be within Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool.
* Ken Dodd: A Legacy of Happiness is on BBC2 on Sunday night at 9pm.
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