READ MORE:<\/b> The seaside town near Greater Manchester that’s one of UK’s best for food and drink<\/a><\/p>\n READ MORE:<\/b> More ‘1930s-style homes’ to be built in Greater Manchester town <\/a><\/p>\n 10. Jasper Carrott Like Billy Connolly, Mike Harding and Richard Digance, Birmingham-born Carrott started performing in folk clubs writing observational jokes -Credit:SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p>\n Birmingham-born Carrott started performing in folk clubs, writing observational jokes to stand out from turns who recycled other people\u2019s gags before blossoming into stand-up and becoming a TV regular. He hasn\u2019t been on screen for a while, he says, \u201cfor a very good reason: I can\u2019t dance, I can\u2019t skate and I\u2019m a crap cook\u201d.<\/p>\n Gary says: “The Beeb\u2019s belated tribute to Jasper, 80, was tucked away on BBC4. A shame. The evening over-flowed with comic joy as Carrott noted ‘a cougar for me would be 98 with an insatiable lust for bingo\u2026 Where would you go after a date? Back to her place, the care home!'”<\/p>\n Noting that Robin Williams was a fan, Gary says Jasper “has always had a nice line in smart, relatable stand-up. His TV show Jasper Carrott: Back To The Front found him reflecting on teenage boys: ‘Surly, rude, uncommunicative, spotty\u2026 and what do we do? We make them into shop assistants’.”<\/p>\n After his accidental hit single in 1975 (Funky Moped b\/w Magic Roundabout), he became a TV fixture for decades hosting shows like Carrott\u2019s Lib and Canned Carrott, and starring in The Detectives (co-written by Steve \u2018Peaky Blinders\u2019 Knight), a deadpan spoof of crime detective dramas.<\/p>\n Jasper\u2019s best gags included: \u201cLaughter is the best medicine \u2014 unless you’re diabetic, then insulin comes pretty high on the list.\u201d<\/p>\n 9. Lee Mack Lancashire’s Lee Mack, born Lee Gordon McKillop, is best known now as a team captain on BBC1’s Would I Lie To You? -Credit:Getty Images<\/p>\n Lancashire\u2019s Lee Mack, born Lee Gordon McKillop, is best known now as a team captain on BBC1\u2019s Would I Lie To You? His lightning-fast quips, tall tales, and laser-sharp mind have made this inspired resurrection of Call My Bluff an unmissable treat and also one of the few successful comedy shows in today\u2019s schedules.<\/p>\n A former Pontins Bluecoat Lee, 57, won the So You Think You\u2019re Funny award at the 1995 Edinburgh Fringe and was nominated for the Perrier Award five years later. In 2006 he created, co-wrote and starred in the hit sitcom Not Going Out which still runs to this day. Although lacking the emotional depth of classics like Porridge and Steptoe & Son, the show remains a guaranteed gag-fest with rapid one-liners like \u201cI\u2019m going to donate my body to science, keep my dad happy \u2013 he always wanted me to go to medical school.\u201d<\/p>\n The writers spend 10 months \u201clocked away, getting the stories right\u201d says Lee who has always sought to emulate the US sitcom model: \u201cFriends, Seinfeld, Frasier \u2013 every ten seconds there\u2019s a gag.\u201d<\/p>\n On stage Lee is just as funny, cracking jokes like \u201cI\u2019m in a relationship at the moment. Sorry girls\u2026it\u2019s going to have to be your place.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a bite to eat around the corner. Horse and Hounds \u2013 I won\u2019t be ordering that again.\u201d<\/p>\n And \u201cMy wife, she\u2019s carrying our first child. He\u2019s eight, the lazy little\u2026\u201d All this and a Buddhist podcast too.<\/p>\n 8. Harry Hill Harry Hill, the “wide-collared loon” whose live blend of surreal absurdity and sharp one-liners translated into hours of TV hilarity -Credit:Getty Images<\/p>\n “The ‘wide-collared loon’, whose live blend of surreal absurdity and sharp one-liners translated into hours of TV hilarity,” says Gary.<\/p>\n “Best was his long-running Harry Hill\u2019s TV Burp, essentially Googlebox with giggles. Kent-raised former doctor Harry (born Mathew Hall) turned the show into a comedy masterclass combining clips with catchphrases, puppets, song snippets, stunts, double takes, physical comedy, off-the-wall gags, unexpected guests and wry observations. Noticing Paul Burrell\u2019s biceps on I\u2019m A Celebrity, Harry quipped; ‘Where\u2019d he get those muscles?…It\u2019s from carting [Princess Diana\u2019s] stuff up into the loft!'”<\/p>\n Hill’s goonish catchphrases included ‘stalagmites, stalactites \u2013 you\u2019ve got to have a system’. Stars and bit-part actors from shows Harry was reviewing would turn up in the studio along with the badger parade, The K Factor (Hill\u2019s knitting-based answer to The X Factor), and frequent fights.<\/p>\n \u201cWho is the naughtiest vegetarian?\u201d he asked before calling on a clash between Heather Mills and Hitler.<\/p>\n “Harry and his writers would sit through hours of TV just for a single joke, so unsurprisingly he finally pulled the plugs after eleven series (121 shows),” notes Gary.<\/p>\n “His next ITV<\/a> show Alien Fun Capsule, continued the TV Burp humour in the form of a panel show with baffled and bemused celebrity panellists. Lorraine Kelly was asked to blow into a bagpipe breathalyser after been shown a clip of her younger self apparently inebriated.”<\/p>\n Harry\u2019s stand-up was equally bonkers: “My Dad used to say \u2018always fight fire with fire\u2019, which is probably why he got thrown out of the fire brigade.”<\/p>\n 7. Peter Kay The legendary Peter Kay -Credit:Getty Images<\/p>\n “Everything this cuddly comedy nice guy has ever done on TV has been quality,” writes Gary. “From Peter Kay\u2019s Phoenix Nights to the dialogue he wrote for his 2004 Coronation Street<\/a> character Eric Gartside, a Newton<\/a> & Ridley drayman who dated Shelley Unwin.”<\/p>\n From a working-class Irish family, Kay was born and bred in Bolton<\/a> and his warm, earthy comedy has stayed true to his roots. His 2010\u20132011 stand-up comedy sold over 1.2million tickets. His early stand-up shows have been repeated on TV so many times most viewers could repeat every punchline: “I saw a fat person wearing a sweatshirt with ‘Guess’ on it. I said: ‘Thyroid problem?'”<\/p>\n Gary says: “Much of his humour is recognisable and drawn from real life including this true story about an elderly neighbour: ‘There was a power cut one night, so my mum went round to see if she was all right. She said \u2018I thought there\u2019d been a power cut \u2013 then a bus went past with its lights on’.”<\/p>\n His 2004 TV adverts for John Smith\u2019s bitter, played on his everyman appeal with catchphrases, \u201c\u2019Ave it!\u201d and \u201cTwo lamb bhunas.\u201d Kay even notched up three No 1 hit singles including Is This The Way To Amarillo with Tony Christie. His acting credits range from Doctor Who \u2013 where his sinister character, Victor Kennedy, turned out to be a hostile alien called the Abzorbaloff \u2013 to playing Danny Baker\u2019s Cockney docker father Fred in the much-missed Cradle To Grave. Peter\u2019s last series was the gentler comedy Peter Kay\u2019s Car Share (2015 \u2013 2018).<\/p>\n Gary says: “Peter\u2019s humour brought traditional northern comedy up to date without losing its mass appeal. He might be standing on the shoulders of giants, but in the process he turned himself into a 21st century Goliath.”<\/p>\n 6. Jim Davidson Jim Davidson -Credit:AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n “He has been cancelled, arrested (and acquitted), insulted and branded a ‘racist, sexist, right-wing dinosaur’,” writes Gary.<\/p>\n “Jim Davidson\u2019s career has seen more twists and turns than a fairground Waltzer but in the process his TV career produced a success of gems.”<\/p>\n Gary notes how growing up on a southeast London council estate in Kidbrooke, Jim was impressed by Dave Allen and inspired by near-the-knuckle blue-collar stand-up comedians like Jimmy \u201cKinnel\u201d Jones and Peter Demmer. The youngest son of a Glaswegian father and an Irish mother from Cork, Jim\u2019s gift for mimicry took off at St Austin\u2019s boys\u2019 school in southeast London impersonating teachers.<\/p>\n He was 22 when he won his heat on ITV talent show New Faces in 1976, turning it into this joke: “I rang home and said, ‘Mum, I\u2019ve won New Faces, you\u2019ll never have to work again’. And she didn\u2019t, the lazy cow’.”<\/p>\n Gary says: “Jim came second in the final and his subsequent TV career encompassed sketch shows, sitcoms, stand-up (Stand Up Jim Davidson), and a stint as the fiendish Phantom Flan-Flinger on brilliant Saturday morning kids\u2019 show Tiswas. BBC1 poached him to host snooker game-show Big Break for ten hit series.<\/p>\n “He then took over The Generation Game for six years, turning it into an anarchic cross between the original show and Tiswas, cramming funny putty into every possible crevice. The breadth of Jim\u2019s comedic prowess, encompassing gag-telling, physical comedy, impressions, anecdotes, and songs, is generally overlooked by his detractors. In his varied career, he has also been an actor, playwright, panto star and businessman. He launched his own comedy streaming channel Ustreme during lockdown.”<\/p>\n 5. Les Dawson Snooty critics wrongly dismissed him as a purveyor of cheap ‘misogynist’ mother-in-law jokes, says Gary -Credit:-<\/p>\n Gary says: “Snooty critics wrongly dismissed him as a purveyor of cheap ‘misogynist’ mother-in-law jokes, but Les, the Manchester-born son of a brick-layer, was a unique and complex comedian.<\/p>\n “He was happiest performing fanciful self-penned comic monologues. He was, one writer observed, ‘a big fat, heavy slob of a man but with a very sensitive mind’.<\/p>\n “Dawson\u2019s routines flowed from a northern life that was already fading into memories \u2013 a world of clogs and shawls, pubs and social clubs.”<\/p>\n After Les won Opportunity Knocks in 1967, the BBC<\/a> gave him his long-running series Sez Les. He was a regular on the comedy panel show Jokers Wild. He did one-liners like: \u201cOurs is a football marriage, we keep waiting for the other one to kick off\u201d, \u201cI used to sell furniture for a living\u2026the trouble was, it was my own\u201d and \u201cHe drank so heavily, the only thing that grew on his grave were hops\u201d. He also had a strong line in longer, more literate jokes such as: \u201cIn awe, I watched the waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered chariot towards the ebony void of infinite space wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter and Mars hang, for ever festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I looked at all this, I thought… I must put a roof on this toilet.\u201d<\/p>\n Gary adds: “Millions warmed to his grim-faced, gravel-voiced, glumly misanthropic persona. At his best Les channelled his hero, WC Fields (just as Jack Dee later channelled Dawson). Yes, he did mother-in-law jokes, but they evolved out of the real problems caused by young hard-up postwar couple being forced to live with in-laws. Dawson took over as presenter of BBC quiz show Blankety Blank from 1984 to 1990, turning it a vehicle for his po-faced put-downs.<\/p>\n “He is remembered now for his gurning face, his garden fence Cissie and Ada double act with Roy Barraclough. But beyond the broad comedy, Dawson appeared in Alan Plater\u2019s The Loner, and played the centenarian Nona in an Argentinian play of that name on BBC2. He also wrote 12 books included a funny Raymond Chandler spoof called Well Fared, My Lovely. The glum clown could play Hamlet when he needed to.”<\/p>\n 4. Paul O’Grady Paul O’Grady was onstage as Lily at London’s Vauxhall Tavern in 1987 when the pub was raided by the drug squad -Credit:Getty Images<\/p>\n Gary beings his praise of O’Grady by remebering this story: “Paul O\u2019Grady was onstage as Lily at London\u2019s Vauxhall Tavern in 1987 when the pub was raided by the drug squad. Noticing the officers were all wearing rubber gloves, in the age of Aids paranoia, Lily quipped, ‘Looks like we\u2019ve got some help with the washing up’.”<\/p>\n He adds: “Nothing phased him. O\u2019Grady based his ‘blonde bombsite’ creation on the tough, colourful women of his own Birkenhead family and their neighbours. Savage was Paul\u2019s mother\u2019s maiden name and acid tongues abounded. He recalled ‘The aunties would turn up at a wedding dressed to death, and there\u2019d often be a fight. One cousin\u2019s marriage ended up in the Birkenhead News with the headline Fracas at Wedding’.<\/p>\n “O\u2019Grady\u2019s father was a plant operator at an oil refinery, his mum worked in a factory and he\u2019d had a strict Catholic upbringing. Unlike previous TV drag acts like Danny La Rue and Dame Edna, ‘Lily Veronica Mae Savage’ was a working-class peroxide ‘slapper’ who wore laddered tights and PVC mini-skirts and let her dark roots show. His comedy hit hard but as he said ‘Noel Coward said work is more fun than fun, but then he didn\u2019t work in the Bird\u2019s Eye factory packing frozen fish fingers nine hours a day, did he?'”<\/p>\n Lily\u2019s first proper TV airing was Channel 4\u2019s late-night Viva Cabaret! Small TV appearances followed, including a cameo in Brookside, before the character was signed up by The Big Breakfast to do celebrity interviews. Lily had her own ITV An Evening With and by 1998 had taken over BBC1\u2019s Blankety Blank. Some of her printable lines include: \u201cI went to the doctor the other day and he said I was a paranoid schizophrenic… Well, he didn\u2019t actually say it, but we know what he was thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n Gary adds: “Lily never lost her razor-sharp tongue or her subversive edge, but Paul tired of her and by 2001 he was presenting travelogues for ITV out of costume before starring in BBC sitcom Eyes Down (2003-04) and then presenting ITV\u2019s daytime chat show The Paul O\u2019Grady Show which was rebranded as The New Paul O\u2019Grady Show on C4.”<\/p>\n 3. Bob Monkhouse Bob Monkhouse was a successful TV game show host for decades -Credit:TV Times\/Future Publishing via Getty Images<\/p>\n “He was such a successful TV game show host for decades people forgot Monkhouse was a brilliant stand-up comedian,” says Gary.<\/p>\n “The reminders came in the shape of his ITV An Audience With and borderline blue best-selling DVD Bob Monkhouse Exposes Himself. Kent-born Bob had a photographic memory and instant recall of one-liners. He was also self-aware, smart and a superb gag writer, as demonstrated by this self-effacing one-liner: ‘They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian\u2026they\u2019re not laughing now.’<\/p>\n “Other Bob gems included ‘I\u2019d never be unfaithful to my wife \u2013 I love my house too much’. And ‘I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my father. Not screaming and crying like his passengers’. His writing was inventive and he was a superb raconteur. Yet he pulled no punches about his own life in his honest and unsparing 1994 autobiography, Crying With Laughter.”<\/p>\n Robert Alan Monkhouse was the grandson of a custard powder tycoon. A lonely, overweight child, Bob felt unloved by his parents and cheered himself up by writing jokes which he sold to children\u2019s comics and later comedians like the immortal Max Miller.<\/p>\n In 1948 he conned his way to a BBC radio audition. Shortly afterwards, he and Terry Scott were the BBC’s first contracted comedians. Bob and his writing partner Denis Goodwin wrote up to seven radio scripts a week, as well as material for Bob Hope and Dean Martin. On black and white TV Bob hosted Candid Camera, Mad Movies and more; he also appeared in the first Carry On film. In 67 ITV poached him to compere Sunday Night at the London Palladium. His success led to his first game show host, The Golden Shot, followed by Family Fortunes, Celebrity Squares, Bob\u2019s Full House, Bob\u2019s Your Uncle and a revival of Opportunity Knocks. Yet he never stopped live work: \u201cI still enjoy sex at 74,\u201d he said. \u201cI live at 75, it\u2019s no distance.\u201d<\/p>\n Before Bob\u2019s death in December 2003, he performed in front of an audience of younger comedians including Mark Steel and Fiona Allen. The show called Bob Monkhouse: The Last Stand proved he was still relevant and crucially still funny.<\/p>\n 2. Bernard Manning Bernard Manning -Credit:Channel 5<\/p>\n Gary says: “Mr Controversy. The combative bad boy who rose from the northern working men\u2019s club circuit to the simultaneous status of folk demon and national treasure. And the man of whom Stephen Fry said ‘Few comedians I\u2019ve ever seen have been able to make the art look so simple’.<\/p>\n “Liberal myths about Manning begin with the idea that he was outrageously right-wing and built a career on ethnic jokes. Neither claim is true. Bernard Manning once spoke to me with affection about Labour<\/a> PM Harold Wilson; he also loved Nye Bevan for his oratory, but Churchill was his great political hero.<\/p>\n “And as for jokes, just watch his TV debut on ITV\u2019s The Comedians. The best included two attendants on a boating lake: One shouts, ‘Come in number 91, your time is up’. The other said ‘We\u2019ve only got 90 boats’. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Are you having trouble number 16?’<\/p>\n “His gags on The Wheeltappers & Shunters\u2019 Social Club are also as clean as freshly fallen true. Yes, Bernard\u2019s act got bluer and dodgier as time progressed but busting through the boundaries of good taste meant money in the bank for the greengrocer\u2019s son: ‘Grown men that work on building sites don\u2019t want to hear \u2018ecky thump\u2019 and \u2018ooh dammit\u2019, he said.<\/p>\n![\"Jasper](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/6f549378d8679f9bfab73cd64dea0a58.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Lee](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/e50816e6257341a71ac3ca4a911c7fb0.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Harry](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/4d3dcbd66083954e24ecb576aa12ba06.jpeg\"\/)
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<\/p>\n![\"Jim](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/7694fe2b3d71882abd7c363307f08e3e.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Les](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/13cad124f9ce78c7a3632a54a06deefd.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/5b16dd2fa3c77b195ac84b22d70b9d94.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Bob](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/b31db6d6228d86e96816a59cf63d009a.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Bernard](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/5e19e570f31a5b117d9f5f79f080e46e.jpeg\"\/)
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![\"Billy](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/96372a7be73b4eb90392947c349f92f3.jpeg\"\/)
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