Ken Dodd: A Legacy of Happiness

Julia Bradbury takes a series of walks following the old tracks, overgrown cuttings and ancient viaducts of Britain's lost rail empire.

Julia Bradbury heads for Iceland to embark on the toughest walk of her life. Her challenge is to walk the 60 kilometres of Iceland's most famous hiking route, a trail that just happens to end at the unpronounceable volcano that brought air traffic across Europe to a standstill in 2010 . With the help of Icelandic mountain guide Hanna, Julia faces daunting mountain climbs, red hot lava fields, freezing river crossings, deadly clouds of sulphuric gas, swirling ash deserts and sinister Nordic ghost stories as she attempts to reach the huge volcanic crater at the centre of the Eyjafjallajökull glacier.

This 90-minute documentary brings to life Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s international bestseller, “The Cloudspotter’s Guide”, which draws on science, meteorology and mythology for a magical journey through the world of clouds. It is no dry treatise on the science of nephology but a playful trip through the varied beauty and distinctive personalities of the ten principal cloud types From the ethereal cirrus to the terrifying cumulonimbus, the film tells the story of the short but eventful life of clouds and their importance to our planet. Find out how immense quantities of water can stay up in the sky for so long and how lightning and thunder are created.

Produced over four years with full access from Ken’s widow Lady Dodd, the film takes an in-depth look into Doddy’s private world, exploring the many secrets of his comic talent, revealing never-before-seen home-videos, stage performances and extracts from some of the thousands of Ken’s diary notebooks which he’d asked his wife to burn after his death. Wrestling with her conscience for quite some time, Lady Dodd, finally agrees with entertainment historians, museum curators and many of Ken’s admirers like Stephen K Amos, Harry Hill, Shaparak Khorsandi, Lee Mack, Paul O’Grady, Johnny Vegas, and Sir Ian McKellen to preserve Doddy’s notebooks for posterity. These stars explore their passion and memories of Ken in this candid, insightful film which takes you backstage behind the red curtain to reveal a far more intriguing man than the public or even his wife ever realised.

In this documentary series, Ifor ap Glyn travels across Britain, exploring some if its most holy and sacred sites.