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, George Roper, Duggie Brown and Colin Crompton all became masters of the excruciatingly bad joke and the knowing wink.