John Gibson: Now I’m a Diddy Man for Doddy

DODDY had just done 20 years in the business when we first met in Edinbrugh. Love Is Like a Violin had romped to No 1 in the charts, even though everybody knew love is not at all like a fiddle. Too many strings go bust.

The ageless doyen of the Diddy Men was but a year or so off his target hundred. In reality he had just turned 85. “How business is my hobby,” he told me. “I love every second. I’ve no other interests.”

The taxman doubtless will concur. “I wanted to cater for family audiences, so I created the Diddy Men for the kids. Then I turned producer, staging my own show.”

After converting me into a Diddy Man (it’s inevitably a giggle with Doddy) he added in an exclusive interview from the Gibpress File, before departing Edinburgh, “I’d like to do more TV. Every night’s a first night on the box. Nobody needs to warn me about over-exposure but you mustn’t visit people’s homes too often.”

Not without a tickling stick.

Let him be

Can’t they let him lie and leave him alone? A family feud has erupted over Spike Milligan’s headstone in an East Sussex churchyard, with its priceless epitaph: ‘‘I told you I was ill.’’

Right now I can’t think of anything to rival that. Not in Edinburgh. I’ll welcome examples. As for Spike’s feudin’ and a-fightin’ kin, hell mend them.

Afterwords . .

How’s your dress sense? Regardless, mark these words. If you wear a collar and a tie, you’ll go to heaven when you die.