Hovis

File:Hovis-logo.png
Type	Bread
Owner	Premier Foods (since 2007)
Country	United Kingdom
Introduced	1890[1]
Previous owners	Rank Hovis McDougall (1962–2007)
Website	http://www.hovisbakery.co.uk/

Hovis is a UK brand of flour and bread, owned by Premier Foods. The brand, which began in 1886, ended up as part of Rank Hovis McDougall in 1962 after a succession of mergers. RHM, whose bread making division has been known as British Bakeries since 1955, also owns the Mother's Pride and Nimble bread brands. The Hovis part of the business still specialises in high wheatgerm wholemeal flour, the bread being baked independently.

History[link]

This section requires expansion.

The brand began in 1886;^[1] the Hovis process was patented on 6 October 1887^[2] by Richard "Stoney" Smith (1836–1900), and S. Fitton & Sons Ltd developed the brand, milling the flour and selling it along with Hovis branded baking tins to other bakers. The name was coined in 1890 by London student Herbert Grime in a national competition set by S. Fitton & Sons Ltd to find a trading name for their patent flour which was rich in wheat germ. Grime won £25 when he coined the word from the Latin phrase hominis vis – "the strength of man".^[1] The company became the Hovis Bread Flour Company Limited in 1898.^[1]

When the abundance of certain B vitamins in wheatgerm was reported in 1924, Hovis increased in popularity.^[1]

Rank Hovis in Kingston upon Hull.

The adverts[link]

In 1915, when the London and South Western Railway inaugurated their first electric train services, they introduced alphabetical head-codes in lieu of the traditional discs used on steam locomotives so that the general public could easily identify their trains. There were five routes,^[specify] and when combined together they spelt 'HOVIS'. It featured heavily in early advertising.^{[citation needed]}

In 1973, Hovis became lodged in the public imagination through an evocative television advertisement, "Boy on Bike" (a.k.a. "Boy on the Bike" and "Bike Ride"),^[1] produced by the Collett Dickenson Pearce advertising agency and directed by Ridley Scott, who six years later would come to the public's attention when Alien was released. The advert featured the slow movement of Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 rearranged for brass.^[3] The advert has been voted Britain's favourite advertisement of all time^{[citation needed]}. The ad was filmed on Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset.

This advertisement was repeated on British television for a 10-day run in May 2006 to commemorate the firm's 120th anniversary. The boy on the bike, Carl Barlow, then aged 13, became a firefighter in East Ham in 1979.^[4]

In 2008 Hovis departed from the "boy on a bike" format by commissioning Go On Lad a retrospective advertisement documenting the 122 years of British history since the brand's launch. Go On Lad was voted "Advert of the Decade" by the British public in December 2009.

Hovis biscuit[link]

Since 1980, Hovis have licensed Jacob's to produce a digestive biscuit, branded as Hovis.^[1] Now a United Biscuits product, they are shaped like a miniature flat copy of the traditional Hovis loaf, and like the bread have the word "HOVIS" stamped on their top surface.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Hovis on Facebook
• Hovis channel on YouTube
• Hovis profile on Twitter

Ken Dodd
Birth name	Kenneth Arthur Dodd
Born	(1927-11-08) 8 November 1927 (age 84) Knotty Ash, Liverpool, UK
Medium	Stand-up, television
Nationality	British
Years active	1954-present
Genres	One-liners
Influences	Arthur Askey Ted Ray Robb Wilton Tommy Handley Max Miller
Influenced	Joe Pasquale Harry Hill Peter Kay
Website	Ken Dodd - Official Website

Kenneth Arthur Dodd OBE (born Liverpool, 8 November 1927) is a British comedian and singer-songwriter, famous for his frizzy hair or "fluff dom" and buck teeth or "denchers", his favourite cleaner, the feather duster (or "tickling stick") and his greeting of "How tickled I am!", as well as his send-off "Lots and Lots of Happiness!". He works mainly in the music hall tradition, although, in the past, has occasionally appeared in drama, including as Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night on stage in Liverpool in 1971; on television in the cameo role of 'The Tollmaster' in the 1987 Doctor Who story Delta and the Bannermen; and as Yorick (in silent flashback) in Kenneth Branagh's film version of Shakespeare's Hamlet in 1996. In the 1960s his fame was such that he rivalled The Beatles as a household name.^[1]

Style, career and achievement[link]

Dodd's stand-up comedy style is fast and relies on the rapid delivery of one-liner jokes. He has claimed that his comic influences include other Liverpool comedians like Arthur Askey, Robb Wilton, Tommy Handley and the "cheeky chappy" from Brighton Max Miller.^[2] He intersperses the comedy with occasional songs, both serious and humorous, in an incongruously fine light baritone voice.

Dodd has had many recording hits, charting on nineteen occasions in the UK Top 40, including his first single "Love Is Like a Violin" (1960), produced on Decca Records by Alex Wharton, which charted at number 8 (UK), and his song "Tears" (Columbia), which topped the UK charts for five weeks in 1965, selling over a million copies. At the time it was the UK's biggest selling single by a solo artist,^[3] and remains one of the UK's biggest selling singles of all time. Dodd was selected to perform the song on A Jubilee Of Music on BBC One on December 31, 1976, a celebration of the key pop successes of Queen Elizabeth II's first twenty-five years as UK monarch.

Dodd is renowned for the length of his performances, and during the 1960s he earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the world's longest ever joke-telling session: 1,500 jokes in three and a half hours (7.14 jokes per minute), undertaken at a Liverpool theatre, where audiences were observed to enter the show in shifts. More recently, Ken Dodd appeared at the Royal Variety Performance in 2006 in front of Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, where he reprised some of his famous jokes, including those about tax accountants as well as singing his famous song "Happiness".

Early life[link]

Dodd was born on 8 November 1927 in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, the son of a coal merchant, Arthur Dodd and wife Sarah. He had an older brother, William (1925–2011). He went to the Knotty Ash School, and sang in the local church choir of St Johns Church, Knotty Ash. At the age of seven, he was dared by his school friends to ride his bike with his eyes shut. He accepted the dare, crashed, and received facial injuries which resulted in his distinctive buck teeth.^{[citation needed]}

He then attended Holt High School, a Grammar School in Childwall, but left at age fourteen to work for his father.^[4] Around this time he became interested in showbusiness after seeing an advert in a comic: "Fool Your Teachers, Amaze Your Friends—Send 6d in Stamps and Become a Ventriloquist!" and sending off for the book. Not long after, his father bought him a ventriloquist's dummy and Ken called it Charlie Brown. He started entertaining at the local orphanage, then at various other local community functions.

He got his big break at age twenty-six when, in September 1954, he made his professional show-business debut at the now-demolished Nottingham Empire.^[5] A nervous young man, he sat in a local Milk Bar for most of the afternoon, going over and over his lines before going to the theatre. He later said, "Well at least they didn't boo me off". He continued to perform, eventually topping the bill at Blackpool in 1958.

Honours[link]

In December 2004, Dodd was in Nottingham to be presented with a framed playbill after a sell out performance at the Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham to celebrate his fifty years in show business. Dodd's first professional performance was on stage at the Empire Theatre, Nottingham in 1954.

In a 2005 poll of comedians and comedy insiders to find 'The Comedian's Comedian', Dodd was voted amongst the 'Top 50 Comedy Acts Ever', ranked as number 36. He was made an honorary fellow of Liverpool John Moores University in 1997. A statue depicting Dodd with his feather duster was unveiled in Lime Street Station, Liverpool on 11 June 2009.

Dodd was made an honorary fellow of The University of Chester on 4 November 2009, having been awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at a graduation ceremony in Chester Cathedral. His doctorate was presented by Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster. He was awarded a Doctorate of Letters at Liverpool Hope University on 25 January 2010 during the University's Foundation Day celebrations.

Personal life[link]

Dodd has had two long-term fiancées, but has never married. A stalker, Ruth Tagg, who harassed Dodd and his girlfriend Anne Jones (who is also a current support act, named 'Sybie' Jones), sending threatening letters and a dead rat, attempted to burn down his house by pushing burning rags through the letterbox, in October 2001. Tagg pleaded guilty to harassment and arson at Preston Crown Court.^[6]

He underwent a hernia operation in late 2007, forcing him to cancel several performances, but was back on stage within a month. Dodd presented the History of Liverpool Comedians at St George's Hall on 1 and 2 April 2008.

Dodd is still touring and appeared at the Glasgow Pavilion in April 2009, playing to a sell-out crowd for over four hours. September 2010 saw Dodd perform at the Playhouse Theatre, Weston Super Mare (Somerset, UK), where he performed to a full house in a show that started at 7pm and finished well after midnight.^{[citation needed]}

He also played at Southport Theatre and Convention Centre, on Saturday November 20, 2010. Similar to the Glasgow Pavilion in April 2009, the show started at 7 pm and finished in the early hours of Sunday 21 November.

Dodd was a supporter of the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher and campaigned during the 1979 general election campaign, which brought her to power. In the last rally, in Wembley Stadium, he introduced her on to the stage.

His first, and to date only, book, Look At It My Way, was published in November 2009. Ken Dodd: The Biography by Stephen Griffin was published on 15 September 2005 (ISBN 1-84317-123-6). In July 2010, the regional UK airline, Eastern Airways, named one of their Jetstream 41 aircraft after Dodd, in celebration of one year of scheduled services to Liverpool, and the support that Dodd shows for the region and in particular the airport.

Discography[link]

UK chart singles[link]

Other singles[link]

• "Where's Me Shirt" (1965)
• "You're My Best Friend" (1980)
• "Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs" (1980)
• "It Is No Secret (What God Can Do)" (1980)

Tax evasion court case[link]

In 1989 Dodd was charged with tax evasion. The subsequent trial, with the prosecution case led by Brian Leveson QC, produced several revelations. The Diddy Men, who had appeared in his stage act, were often played by local children from stage schools, and were revealed never to have been paid. Dodd was also revealed to have very little money in his bank account, having £336,000 in cash stashed in suitcases in his attic. When asked by the judge, "What does a hundred thousand pounds in a suitcase feel like?", Dodd made his now famous reply, "The notes are very light, M'Lord."^[9]

Dodd was represented by George Carman, who in court famously quipped, "Some accountants are comedians, but comedians are never accountants".^[10] The trial lasted three weeks: Dodd was acquitted.^[10]

Despite the strain of the trial, Dodd immediately capitalised on his new-found notoriety with a successful season running from Easter to Christmas 1990 at the London Palladium. It was there he had previously broken the house record for the longest comedy season at the theatre, in 1965, with a residency lasting forty-two weeks. Some of his current material mocks the trial and tax in general. For a while he introduced his act with the words, "Good evening, my name is Kenneth Arthur Dodd; singer, photographic playboy and failed accountant!"^[11]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ken Dodd

• Ken Dodd - Official Website
• BBC Comedy - Ken Dodd
• Review of Ken Dodd show in Bournemouth 2007
• The Ken Dodd Story
• Unofficial Ken Dodd site
• Ken Dodd at the Internet Movie Database

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