The quintessential quickfire stand-up comedy show, The Comedians is one of the great successes of ITV - lasting from 1971 until 1993 and making household names of many of its stars. With routines that were honed to perfection in the hard-knock territory of Northern working men's clubs, Bernard Manning, Frank Carson, Charlie Williams, Ken Goodwin, George Roper, Duggie Brown and Colin Crompton all became masters of the excruciatingly bad joke and the knowing wink.