Ken Dodd has been spreading happiness for decades – now he’s put together a book of photographs which have made him smile. Paddy Shennan reports

THE Squire of Knotty Ash – the surely soon-to-be-knighted Kenneth Arthur Dodd – has made millions of people laugh during his supremely successful career.

If it’s true that laughter really is the best medicine, he probably deserves another title alongside “Sir” . . . and Doctor Dodd has a nice ring to it!

But those accolades are for others to decide – Doddy will simply carry on making people smile, which was also his motivation behind putting together a new book of happy snaps from his life and career: Look At It My Way.

“The criteria for including the photographs was to make you smile,” says our evergreen master of mirth.

He adds: “There are little blurbs which I have written to go with each one. I’m a bit of a poser, but I don’t think George Clooney has got anything to fear!”

The photo collection begins with Doddy’s earliest showbiz days in the 1950s and takes us right through to the recent unveiling of his statue in Lime Street Station. Doddy describes this collection as “a cavalcade of crackpottery” – well, how could it be anything else?

A little more seriously, he says: “It’s certainly a book of memories. They go from when I started out, serving my apprenticeship around the clubs and hot-pot suppers around Merseyside.

“We performers formed a club called the Good Turns Society, and it’s still going to this day.”