KING of the Diddymen Ken Dodd jokingly revealed he was becoming a knight, asking fans: “Can you still go down the chip shop when you’re a Sir?”
The 89-year-old comedian was finally given the honour for his glittering career in the New Year’s Honours list last night — more than 30 years after picking up an OBE.
But just 24 hours earlier he let a select audience in on his news as he brought the curtain down on his 39-date Happiness Tour at the Liverpool Philharmonic.
He told Thursday’s packed 1,700 audience: “It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. On the first of January the Queen is going to tap me on the shoulders with a sword and next year I’ll be called Sir Ken.”
And he added: “Can you still go down the chip shop when you’re a Sir?”
The veteran star — famed for his unruly hair, protruding teeth and “tickling stick” — has charmed crowds over six decades.
He started his professional career in Nottingham in 1954, the year after the Queen’s coronation.
Speaking yesterday, the Liverpool-born star — who has never married — told of his pride, declaring he felt “highly tickled” to have been made a knight.
Vowing to carry on his comedy career, he said: “I’m very proud. I’m very, very happy and full of plumptiousness. I feel highly tickled.
“I’d like to thank all the people who, for some time now, have been wishing this to happen — and now it has happened.”
He insisted it was worth the wait. “You have to wait until you’re asked and about a month ago I got a very surprising letter saying, ‘Would you like to be a Sir’? And if so, that I’d have to keep it secret.”
He added: “I think it makes you feel just a little bit special — not too much, but a little bit special.”
And Ken vowed to continue raising money for charities.
He said: “Showbusiness people are renowned for putting their time and their skills at the service of people who are less fortunate, for various charities, and I shall keep doing that.”
“I’m not going to hang my tickling stick up just yet. I go up and down the motorway like a human yo-yo and it’s lovely. It’s what I do.”
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Early last year he revealed his frustration at not being recognised, admitting he didn’t know why he hadn’t got a knighthood. He joked: “Of course I’d like one. It would keep my ears warm in bed.
“You wait for the call. If you get it, you get it. There is no harm done.”
His cause was thought to have been hurt by a tax investigation in 1989, when he was charged over alleged evasion. He was acquitted after a three-week trial.
The fallout from the case failed to detract from his remarkable career.
The self-styled “Squire from Knotty Ash” was one of Britain’s highest-selling pop artists of the Sixties, racking up hits such as Love is Like A Violin and Tears and Happiness.
He hosted a 42-week residency at the London Palladium in 1965 and once made it into the Guinness Book of Records for telling 1,500 jokes in three and a half hours.
Defying his age, this year’s Happiness tour saw him embark on a 39-date circuit stretching from Dunfermline to Skegness, Blackpool, Bradford and Wolverhampton before the close in Liverpool.
Only this month, Manchester United legend Gary Neville called the star his “favourite scouser”.