Leslie "Les" Dawson (2 February 1931 – 10 June 1993) was a popular English comedian remembered for his deadpan style, curmudgeonly persona and jokes about his mother-in-law and wife.

Raised in the Collyhurst district of Manchester, his first job was in the parcels department of the Manchester Co-op. He worked briefly as a journalist on the Bury Times.

Dawson claimed that he began his entertainment career as a pianist in a Parisian brothel – in his entertaining but factually unreliable autobiography. In any case, his efforts at making a living as a pianist ("I finally heard some applause from a bald man and said 'thank you for clapping me' and he said 'I'm not clapping - I'm slapping me head to keep awake'"), evolved into comedy as he found he got laughs by playing wrong notes and complaining to the audience. He made his television debut on the talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1967 and became a prominent comic on British television for the rest of his life.

Dame Shirley Bassey, DBE (born 8 January 1937), is a Welsh singer. She found fame in the mid-1950s and was "one of the most popular female vocalists in Britain during the last half of the 20th century". In the US, in particular, she is best known for recording the theme songs to the James Bond films Goldfinger (1964), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), and Moonraker (1979) and is the only artist to record more than one Bond theme song. Bassey is also a UNESCO Artist for Peace.

"Born above a brothel in a docklands slum", Shirley Veronica Bassey was the sixth and last child of Eliza Jane Start and Henry Bassey in Tiger Bay, Cardiff, Wales (now called Cardiff Bay), of paternal Nigerian and maternal English descent. Bassey's mother also had four children from previous relationships, two of whom lived in the Bassey household. Eliza had married previously, to Alfred Metcalfe, and upon her marriage to Bassey, Eliza Jane Metcalfe listed Alfred Metcalfe as her father on the marriage registry. It has thus been theorized that she never divorced Alfred, and that her marriage to Bassey was bigamous. Eliza and Henry's second child died in infancy, so Shirley was born into a household of three sisters, two half-sisters, and one brother. A year later her father was arrested and charged with having sex with a minor, was tried, imprisoned for five years, then deported. After Henry's arrest, Eliza and the children moved to the nearby steelworking district of Splott.

Dennis Waterman (born 24 February 1948 ) is a British actor and singer, best known for his tough-guy roles in television series including The Sweeney, Minder and New Tricks.

His acting career spans over 50 years, starting with childhood roles in film and theatre, and including adult roles in film, television, and West End theatre. He is notable for the range of roles he has played, including for example horror (Scars of Dracula), adventure (Colditz), comedy (Fair Exchange), comedy-drama (Minder), musical (Windy City) and sports (The World Cup: A Captain's Tale), as well as police TV series like The Sweeney. He has appeared in over 25 films.

He has married four times and has been caricatured in the TV series Little Britain.

Waterman was born the youngest of nine children to Rose Juliana (née Saunders) and Harry Frank Waterman in Clapham,London. The family, which included siblings Ken, Peter, Stella, Norma and Myrna, lived at 2 Elms Road, Clapham Common South Side. Harry Waterman was a ticket collector for British Rail. Two older sisters, Joy and Vera had already left home by the time Dennis was born, and another brother, Allen had died as a young child.

Rustie Lee is a television chef, actress and musician in the United Kingdom, most famous for her appearances in the 1980s on morning station, TV-am. She was born in Jamaica, but moved to Birmingham with her family as a child. Following her successful stint as a chef on TV-am in 1983, Lee took over from Sarah Kennedy on the second, less successful, incarnation of ITV gameshow Game for a Laugh.^{[citation needed]} She also embarked on a brief singing career.^{[citation needed]}

In 2004 Lee appeared on Living's I'm Famous and Frightened! 2, a reality show featuring a number of celebrities staying in a castle over a weekend, taking part in various challenges and looking for paranormal activity, guided by a medium. Viewers voted for their favourite and the celebrities were voted off one by one. Lee won the series showing a keen interest in the tasks and occasional emotional involvement, giving detailed and varied accounts of how she felt at certain points.^{[citation needed]} Lee has written a cookbook called A Taste of the Caribbean.

Roy Barraclough MBE (born 12 July 1935, Preston, Lancashire, England) is a comic actor. He is best known for his role as the shifty, lugubrious landlord of the Rovers Return, Alec Gilroy in the long-running British TV soap Coronation Street (1972, 1975, 1986–1992, 1995, 1996–1998) where he formed an on-screen partnership with Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear).

Roy Barraclough began his career as a draughtsman, taking time off to work as an entertainer in a holiday camp on the Isle of Wight. Combining his day job with local amateur theatre for several years he was eventually offered a full-time acting contract by legendary repertory theatre producer Nita Valerie with her company in Huddersfield. Barraclough regularly appeared on stage and at times played piano in the pit, most notably for comedienne Hylda Baker.

He later joined the repertory company at Stoke (appearing alongside Ben Kingsley) and then Oldham in 1966, appearing alongside Barbara Knox, Anne Kirkbride and others. Whilst at Oldham he made his first TV appearances for Granada Television, including Coronation Street in 1964.