Leslie "Les" Dawson (2 February 1931 - 10 June 1993) was a popular English comedian remembered for his deadpan style, curmudgeonly persona and jokes about his mother-in-law and wife.
Raised in the Collyhurst district of Manchester, his first job was in the parcels department of the Manchester Co-op. He worked briefly as a journalist on the Bury Times.
Dawson claimed that he began his entertainment career as a pianist in a Parisian brothel— in his entertaining but factually unreliable autobiography. In any case, his efforts at making a living as a pianist ("I finally heard some applause from a bald man and said 'thank you for clapping me' and he said 'I'm not clapping - I'm slapping me head to keep awake'"), evolved into comedy as he found he got laughs by playing wrong notes and complaining to the audience. He made his television debut on the talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1967 and became a prominent comic on British television for the rest of his life.