John Dowie, now in ill health and living in rural Cambridgeshire, is a legend of the alternative comedy scene.
An inspiration to many, including Stewart Lee, Simon Munnery, Alexei Sayle and Mark Steel – he is the missing link between Spike Milligan, the arts lab scene of the seventies and the alternative comedy explosion of the eighties.
His new book is a beautiful meditation on life, death and childhood – with the odd sideways glance at his hugely influential career.
Dowie remembers his own parents Harry and Barbara Dowie, and reflects how a loving environment in childhood stayed with him into adult life. He talks about his own children, and how he gave up comedy to spend time with them.
He revisits his professional heroes – Ken Campbell, Ken Dodd, Spike Milligan – and explains how they helped him find his own singular voice.
Dowie recalls his music career as a punk poet – and mentions how he found himself directing and working with Neill Innes, who he exalts as one of the nicest people he ever met.
There are a lot more names Dowie could drop if he wanted to. But this is not a conventional showbiz memoir – just as his last book, The Freewheelin John Dowie was not a normal travel book.
This is a story about love. About the people who sustained him throughout his life and about how the love and kindness which was shown to him, was passed on to other people.
He was poor, he was bullied, he screwed up a lot of things – but Dowie knew love when he saw it – and now, as he looks back over his life, he realises it is the only thing that matters.
Dowie shares some of the beautiful poems he wrote for his children while they were young and he reveals how the hero he invented, Dogman, became a guiding principle for his life.
There is real wisdom here – and a heartfelt appreciation of the important things in life. It speaks of a life well-lived.
I read the book in a single sitting and I know I’ll read it again.
You can read Dowie on Ken Dodd here:
You can buy the book here:
