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• Bob Monkhouse was one of Britain's most enduring performers, with a career spanning more than half a century.
  
  His American-style approach, often derided as smarmy, won him much criticism, but his professionalism, hard work and photographic memory for gags gave him a longevity many would envy.
  
  Heir to a custard empire, he decided he'd rather write comedy than take over the family business, and started off sending strip cartoons to every comic in Britain at the age of 12, while still a pupil at Dulwich College. By the age of 15 was making a regular income from it.
  
  His started his broadcasting career on radio in 1949, and worked as a stand-up comic - but hit the big time as a gag writer with partner, Denis Goodwin.
  
  They wrote jokes for the likes of Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis - and reportedly sold American comics' lines back to British acts.
  
  Much of Monkhouse's later fame stemmed from game shows, hosting the likes of The Golden Shot, Celebrity Squares, Family Fortune including The $64,000 Question, Opportunity Knocks and more.
  
  However, his autobiography Crying With Laughter and his televised stand-up show An Audience With revived his reputation as a comic, rather than just an entertainer, in the mid-1990s.
  
  He was also awarded the OBE in 1993, and in 1995 he won a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards.

• Dodd started his career as a ventriloquist - and indeed still uses the Dicky Mint dummy in his act.
  
  However, his success came through his exaggerated on-stage persona - the manic hairstyle, protruding teeth and, of course, trademark tickling stick - combined with a relentless stream of one-liners, peppered with nonsense words like 'tattifilarious', that can - and do - entertain audiences for hours.
  
  He built his reputation as a live performer on the variety stage, and famously logs audience reactions to jokes every night, building up a picture of what plays well where.
  
  Ken Dodd's act still owed a lot to the traditional stand-up stuff prevalent in the old variety theatre. This meant that he was expected to sing as he neared the end of his act, thus allowing his audience to wind down from the pace of his comic antics. Fortunately, Ken had quite a good voice and his renditions of romantic ballads were good enough for him to be given the opportunity to record. So in 1960 his entry into the UK chart came as no surprise, but his transformation into a romantic balladeer was nevertheless a significant achievement for a buck-toothed comedian.
  
  His career was boosted with appearances on TV, often just guest roles, but his bizarre appearance would always stick in the mind. He also has a penchant for singing ballads, as well as his signature tune Happiness, recording several albums of love songs and notching up 19 top 40 hits, including the 1965 chart-topper Tears.
   

• Manchester-born comedian, a former jazz pianist who used his keyboard skills to great effect in his useless-pianist routine. Otherwise, Dawson was noted for his dry, pessimistic delivery and his catalogue of mother-in-law and wife jokes.
  
  Discovered on opportunity knocks, he quickly moved on to star in his own YTV series, Sez Les, in which he developed characters like the seedy Cosmo Smallpiece, and perfected a gossipy housewife double act (Cissie and Ada) with Roy Barraclough.
  
  Taking over Blankety Blank from Terry Wogan, he maintained the show's high ratings and, still with the BBC, he also hosted The Les Dawson Show. His career came full circle in 1990, when he became compere of Opportunity Knocks, succeeding Bob Monkhouse.
  
  One of his most unusual roles was that of a 100-year-old woman in the straight drama, Nona, but his last appearance came in the comedy-drama, Demob, in which he took the role of comic Morton Stanley.
   

• Born in a poor tenement block, Connolly was abandoned by his mother, Mamie, at the age of three and brought up by his aunt, Mona.
  
  As a teenager, he joined the Clyde shipyards, where he served his apprenticeship as a welder. While working there, he bought a banjo for £2 10s after seeing blues singer Pete Seger on the TV, and started performing on Scotland's folk circuit as part of a band called the Humblebums, which counted Gerry Rafferty among its members.
  
  While performing, Connolly noticed that audiences warmed to the banter between his songs, which built up his confidence. In 1970, the band split up and he started performing solo.
  
  Also during his time at the shipyards, he met his first wife, Iris, with whom he had a son and a daughter.
  
  His big break was on the Parkinson show in 1975, which made him a star and led to his first UK tour: The Big Wee Tour.
  
  He spent many years on the road, the lifestyle taking its toll, and he became a heavy drinker, until he gave up alcohol in 1986.
  
  His reputation grew and grew, and he eventually moved to California to try to break into the US, with varying degrees of success.
  
  In 1989, he married Pamela Stephenson, who he met while recording a sketch for Not The Nine O'Clock News.
   

• Allen was born David Tynan O'Mahoney at Tallaght, near Dublin. After school in the Irish capital he went into journalism, like many of his relatives, starting on the Irish Independent.
  
  At the age of 20, he came to London to try to find work on Fleet Street, but couldn’t – so entered Butlins in Skegness as a redcoat instead. It was there he changed his name to Allen to ensure top billing on the alphabetical list.
  
  He got his first break on a BBC talent show in 1959, and in 1961 he toured his stand-up routine around England and France with a then unknown band called The Beatles.
  
  His fame first grew in Australia, in 1963, where he hosted a live TV chat show. Back in Britain, it was guest spots on the Val Doonican Show that made his name.
  
  It led to various series of his own, on both the BBC and ITV, running from 1967 to 1994 and mixing his sit-down stand-up with sketches. The strong language he used often caused controversy, and a four-letter word he uttered on TV in January 1990 was raised in the House of Commons.
  
  Smoking was a trademark part of his routine, but Allen quit his 60-a-day habit in the Eighties, explaining: "I was fed up with paying people to kill me."
  
  He was also famous for missing the tip of one of his fingers, and he invented various tall tales as to how it happened. And when he was asked, “Are you the Irish comedian with half a finger?" he replied, “No, I'm the Irish comedian with nine and a half fingers.”
  
  Allen retired from performing in 1999, ending his broadcast career with a rare interview for BBC Radio 4, but still received offers and was reportedly considering a project at the time of his death.
  
  He once said that he wanted his gravestone to read: "Don't mourn for me now, don't mourn for me never - I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever."
   

• Tommy Cooper was a true original - the trademark Fez, that distinctive laugh, the clumsy, bewildered delivery, and, of course, the catchphrases make him one of the most instantly recognisable of all comedy icons. He didn't have to say anything to make his audience laugh, his appearance alone was enough.
  
  Like many others, Cooper's first foray into showbusiness was with the forces. After serving as an apprentice shipmaker he joined Horse Guards, from where he became part of the entertainments unit.
  
  It was while entertaining the troops, at a Naafi show in Egypt, that the fez became part of his look. Legend has it that he simply lost the pith helmet he had intended to wear, and grabbed the waiter's hat instead.
  
  The tale of how he adopted his maladroit stage act is equally apocryphal . He supposedly botched an audition as a serious magician so badly that everyone thought it was deliberately hilarious.
  
  If the persona came about by accident, Cooper was meticulous in honing it for every last laugh. A notoriously demanding perfectionist, he would be the bane of those working alongside him.
  
  He was a hard worker, too. On demob in 1947 he joined London's Windmill Theatre - the devilishly hard venue where so many comics learned their craft, performing to uninterested punters between the strip shows. Cooper reputedly performed up to 52 shows a week there.
  
  Tours, TV and a role in Eric Syke's film The Plank followed as, throughout the Sixties and Seventies, he cemented his place in the public's affections. In 1969 he was voted ITV's Personality of the Year.
  
  His appetite for work was so voracious that few were surprised that his death came on stage, doing what he loved. And such was his reputation as a relentless joker that when he collapsed during that televised show, most of the audience thought it was just another of his gags.