KEN Campbell's dog is a big fan of Chekov.

"She's into sadness in a big way," explained the 61-year-old comedian, who possesses an all-encompassing knowledge of his profession.

"She'll take a rubber ball, play with it for a bit and then sit at the top of a steep slope and let it roll away out of sight," he expanded.

"She'd be excellent in a Chekovian sort of role -- if he'd written any parts for dogs."

These sort of observations are just what you'd expect from the erudite comic who enlists a phalanx of facts from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, concerning anything from pygmies to shamanic Eskimos, to illuminate his one-man show the History of Comedy.

Ken is currently touring with part one of the show -- ventriloquism -- which he says was, historically, the first comedic form.

There may well be a part two and a part three, although he's not yet sure.

Part one on its own is already proving a huge success. It played at London's National Theatre to huge acclaim and is now on its way to Manchester's Library Theatre on June 12.

"I like touring very much and I can't wait to come to Manchester," he said, before delving into an explanation of the origins of ventriloquism.

"The oldest ventriloquists lived 5,000 years ago in Ancient Egypt," he said. "They were African pygmies who worked as court entertainers."

The popularity of ventriloquism rapidly spread to Ancient Greece.

Ken said: "The thinking was the spirit world was underground and, if you stuck out your bottom, you could pick up emotions from below which would travel up to your stomach.

This resulted in a form of ventriloquism called gastromancy, in which people could hear your stomach speaking."

In his show, Ken traces the history of his subject up through the Eskimos, Maoris, Zulus and his own schooldays, where he first learnt to speak without moving his lips with his friends in a secret schoolboy language.

"The whole show is a great saga of myself," he said. "It's like navel gazing."

Ken Campbell's History of Comedy runs from Thursday, June 12 to Saturday, June 14. Tickets start at £8 from the Library Theatre Box Office on (0161) 2367110.