 The Comedians
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78 x 30 minute episodes
1 x 45 minute episode
2 x 60 minute episodes
Remarkably popular during its earlier series, The Comedians
was basically a bunch of stand-up comedians and a Dixie Jazz band
(Shep's Banjo Boys) in Acker Bilk vests. The end.
Recruited from the hard-drinking Northern night clubs and
working men's clubs that were their staple environment, Granada TV
put the North's best 'unknown' comics into the studio - even
though some had been working for 20 years many were appearing on
television for the first time - taped their (expletives deleted)
live acts and edited the material into non-stop barrages of quips
to slay the audiences at home, packing up to 50 jokes into each
half hour show.
 Many of the lines were so old they creaked, and there was a
fair dose of racist, sexist and physical-defect material that was
only just acceptable then and would not be today, but mostly the
jokes were of the mother-in-law, Irishman and
three-men-walk-into-a-bar variety.
Viewers took to the series with great enthusiasm and from those
first few golden series many stars were born, among them Colin
Crompton (a weedy Northerner), Ken Goodwin (a shy stutterer)
(pictured at right),
Charlie Williams (a 'coloured chap' from Yorkshire), Bernard
Manning (a portly clubman), Lennie Bennett (a giggler) and Mike
Reid (a 'marfy' cockney).
All of them found their nightly fees skyrocketing from around
£50 to £1000 or more. So popular was the series at the time that
in the summer of 1972 The Comedians became a stage show,
mounted in Blackpool, Great Yarmouth and London, and an album made
the lower reaches of the charts.
The series was created by
Granada's Light Entertainment producer Johnny Hamp, whose father
had been a magician playing music halls as The Great Hamp.
Being steeped in the tradition of old-fashioned stage
entertainment, both knew exactly where to find the best local
talent, and had the stamina not only to last the exhausting
three-hour recording sessions where each comedian would perform a
stand-up spot of around 15 to 20 minutes, but also to edit the
resulting tape into finished shows.
 In 1974, on the back of its major success with The Comedians,
Granada launched a Northern working men's club variety show, The
Wheeltappers And Shunters Social Club which featured many of
the same comics, with Bernard Manning and Colin Crompton as
comperes.
Although The Comedians was still turning up fresh
talent, audiences at home grew tired of the formula after three
years and the series came to an end after 50 editions.
Three separate revivals then followed and although none matched
the success of the earlier shows, some new stars were unearthed,
among them Stan Boardman and Roy Walker - indeed, perhaps the best
epitaph for The Comedians is that it spawned more TV games
show hosts than any other series before or since.
"As the Pope once sad to Michelangelo; 'You'd better come
down, I think we'll have it wall-papered'".
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