Gag pile carpet marks Blackpool’s towering contribution to comedy

The engraving, made of granite, bears the names of more than 1,000 stars including Dodd himself as well as Les Dawson, Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper and Morecambe and Wise.

Officials in the resort have proudly dubbed the carpet, which stretches across the Tower Festival Headland beneath Blackpool Tower, its “Angel of the North – but horizontal”. The larger catchphrases can be seen from the summit of the tower.

The 1,880m sq installation features 160,000 individually-cut letters spelling out the famous lines from the heyday of music hall to the 21st century.

The £4m project has taken five years from conception to installation.

Designer Gordon Young said: “I’d been looking at photographs of stars and the Blackpool Tower was a recurring backdrop to the photos – Eric and Ernie in deck chairs, Ken Dodd, Les Dawson.

“It soon became obvious that Blackpool had been a magnetic chuckle point for the nation.”