Tax trial revisited

Ken Dodd's famous tax-evasion trial is to be raked over for a new Channel 4 documentary.

Even though he was acquitted, the comic's unusual private life was exposed to the world during the five-week trial in 1989.

To this day Dodd refuses to discuss the trial, though he still cracks uneasy gags about it in his stage act.

The prosecution claimed Ken Dodd was a calculating cheat, while the defence, led by George Carman QC, argued he was an unreliable eccentric who led a chaotic life and was bad at maths.

Dodd came from a modest background, and he was later to maintain that his poor upbringing spent selling household goods door to door gave him his passion for cash.

He built up a sizeable fortune from the years he spent on the road, but maintained a Spartan lifestyle, not taking a holiday until he was 51 years old, and even then at a knock-down price.

Dodd's mistrust of banks also emerged during the trial, as the court heard that he had amassed thousands of pounds, stored in shoeboxes around his house.

The trial transformed Liverpool's Crown Court into a sell-out theatre, with fellow comics Eric Sykes and Roy Hudd called as character references.

Dodd's acquittal, though, came at a price. His previously private persona had been exposed to the public and he was forced to hand over £800,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties, leaving him virtually bankrupt.

Ken Dodd in the Dock, to be screened on August 6, draws on archive footage as well as interviews with Barry Cryer, Carman's son Dominic Carman and Dodd's biographer, Michael Billington.

Published: 26 Jul 2002