There was more to Stuart than just laughing, but not much. As well as his network gigs, Stuart spent many years accompanying Granadaland's teatimes in LOOK NORTH, then LOOK NORTH WEST, then NORTH WEST TONIGHT, reading the news in his own unique way - few other anchormen went on air caked in fake tan, wearing a pink blazer and a medallion. Stories of the antics up in Manchester are legendary, the most famous perhaps being the notorious making-a-Christmas-pudding item, where the bowls provided were blatantly too small, but Stuart decided to carry on regardless, with hi-hi-hilarious consequences. Inserts to NATIONWIDE saw him gain national exposure, but he really entered the nation's conscience when he took over from David Vine on IT'S A KNOCKOUT, to piss himself laughing into a lipmike, and JEUX SANS FRONTIERES, to piss himself laughing down the phone. Indeed, Stuart later bought the rights to a load of Knockout props, and uses them in corporate gigs.

After Knockout was dropped, Stuart fronted the Sunday afternoon sports show on Radio 2, mixing county cricket with Jim Reeves records. He also fronted piss-poor snooker-themed quiz POT THE QUESTION in 1984, a sort of proto-BIG BREAK with players and celebrities answering questions and potting balls. The standard of the series is perhaps best summed up by a quote from the Radio Times feature promoting the series, where it announced that, in one episode, "David Copperfield decided that one tricky shot would be best played without trousers - so he removed them". Ho ho. He also continued bringing the news to the North West, but controversy struck in the late 80s when he was caught shoplifting (sausages and batteries, fact fans) and the Beeb decided to drop him - although it was highly unlikely he'd have lasted much longer anyway, with a bloke with a clip-on tie going 'Eh up, love!' perhaps not sitting comfortably with the new Birtian news values. With an eye for publicity, he was snapped up immediately by Granada, who paired him with Bob Greaves for the imaginatively-title GRANADA TONIGHT insert Greaves and Hall, where the twin titans of regional news would banter about, well, anything they fancied. Sitting on huge thrones. A couple more regional shows followed, including the holiday show TRAVELLER'S CHECK, and booze review STUART'S GRAPEVINE.

Nowadays you can hear him on Five Live on Saturday afternoons, contributing increasingly deranged reports from the day's football matches on SPORT ON FIVE. Some people reckon that Stuart writes his reports in advance and simply works the match incidents in between them, and it wouldn't be surprising. But until the same time tomorrow, a fond farewell.

Rolf's been entertaining the nation for nearly half a century now, after first arriving in Britain in the 1950s to make a living as a painter. However he soon found himself getting telly gigs, accompanied by an array of gimmicks and a huge range of vocal gymnastics. Presumably Rolf needs a gatefold passport, given he's been an artist, a singer, a comedian, a TV presenter, a musician, a swimmer (in Australia) and probably hundreds of other things too. He was never a dancer, though, as could be illustrated by his hoofings with The Young Generation on endless episodes of THE ROLF HARRIS SHOW on Saturday nights throughout the 1960s. This was your textbook BBC LE extravaganza, mixing comedians, songs, sketches and your chance to vote for the Beeb's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest - and indeed Rolf was behind the mike filling the Wogan role in the contest proper in 1967, commentating on Sandie Shaw's triumph. It seemed that every decade he found a different format, as throughout the seventies he was joined by an army of kids for ROLD ON SATURDAY- OK?, as well as spending most Christmas mornings chatting with hospital patients in MEET THE KIDS.

Onto the eighties, and after being informed that the BBC had just bought the rights to 94 cartoons, Rolf found himself sat behind a drawing board for umpteen episodes of ROLF HARRIS' CARTOON TIME. The show was a piece of piss to produce, simply Rolf drawing scenes from three cartoons, although we were sad to read in his autobiography that he didn't like the show because it was dead dull to make. Instead after a few years he legged it off to HTV West and presented ROLF'S CARTOON CLUB - again he linked animation, but this time he was joined by a bunch of kids to help them make their own cartoons, as well as chatting to animators as well. He also performed the theme tune, and presented the show from a fantastic 'bunker' set sunk into the floor. Alas, it was axed after six years and replaced by WOLF IT- the puppets of WHAT'S UP DOC with some cartoons in between - which pissed Rolf off.

The nineties therefore saw another career change, after Lorraine Heggessey, in possibly her best ever decision, needed to find someone to front the first week of ANIMAL HOSPITAL, and plucked him off a list of celebrities with a vague connection to animals (Rolf does a lot of work for the Cats Protection League). Suddenly he was back in primetime again, and grabbing some ten million viewers a week - and he certainly added a lot to the show, claiming the turning point was when he cried on air one night. Spin-off shows followed, such as ROLF'S AMAZING WORLD OF ANIMALS, and some best-selling books too. Onto the new decade, then, and Rolf's still on our screens, fronting the absorbing ROLF ON ART, which Melvyn Bragg can slag off all he likes, but it's getting about ten times as many viewers as his shows, and is a hundred times more fun. And there's the records, and the charity work, and the comedy routine, and the fact he once spoke to our cousin on the phone - basically, he can do anything. A man who's tired of Rolf Harris is a man without a soul.

An artist who's been working in telly for half a century? Like Rolf, Tony's had a lengthy career on the box which, happily, is still going strong to this day. He made his first TV appearances in the 1950s, showing up on embryonic children's programmes to pen a few pictures, although his most famous role at the time was as Ray Alan's sidekick in his Tich and Quackers routine - which seems an odd sort of career move to us. In the sixties he designed the BLUE PETER ship, and to this day regrets that he got a flat fee for coming up with it rather than being on a royalty. Then he got the VISION ON gig, drawing pictures every week and looking after the gallery, and when the show ended in the 1970s, he carried on exploring the arts in TAKE HART and, from 1984, HARTBEAT. The former was more or less undiluted Tony, with interruptions from Morph, Mr Bennett and the Bristol WHY DON'T YOU ...? gang, while the 'Beat saw Tony accompanied by a range of glamorous female sidekicks, including the sloaney Margot Wilson and punky Joanna Kirk, giving him a sort of Young Mr Grace quality. During the run he also topped and tailed the Morph spin-off series. In the 1990s, his teatime gig was taken over by the funkier SMART, but Tony refused to retire and continued to appear in series such as THE ART BOX BUNCH, and later SMART HART, which saw him teach a cack-handed Kirsten O'Brien how to make masterpieces, in between linking old clips. He's still working, and though he may have been joined by the likes of Neil Buchanan and Mark Speight, Tony still has that little touch of class - and how many TV presenters do you know that still waar a cravat? For services to the neckwear industry alone, the man deserves respect.

Fulham's famous bearded inside-right, Jimmy had already had a lengthy career as player and manager before moving into television, famously being partly responsible for the lifting of the maximum wage - presumably with an eye towards filling time on his TV programmes in decades to come by endlessly discussing spiralling salaries. Hill was considered enough of a card to make punditry appearances, appearing on the Beeb's coverage of the 1966 World Cup. In 1967 he took Coventry to the top flight, but left because they wouldn't give him a ten-year contract, and instead joined the new LWT to become Head Of Sport. Later still - although partly thanks to everyone else in the company resigning - he was Deputy Director of Programmes at the company, which is a bit like Gordon Strachan becoming Greg Dyke's number two in eighteen months' time.

It was Jim who came up with the concept of THE BIG MATCH, revitalising football coverage on London's screens. He joined Brian Moore, who he'd personally recruited from the BBC, as resident pundit, and then in 1970 helmed the legendary ITV World Cup panel. It was always the 'glamour' football show compared to MATCH OF THE DAY, as illustrated by the feature when Jim took Raquel Welsh to watch Chelsea. In 1973 the Beeb snapped him up to front MOTD, which he did for the next fifteen years - linking, analysing, and patronising ("I remember the days when players celebrated with a light ale after the match!"). And singing with Graham Hill on The Bachelors' show - "We're the ruff! Ruff! Ting! Famous TV sportsmen!"

In 1988 league football went off to ITV, and in the new era Jim was one of a team of rotating analysts on the now Des-helmed Match Of The Day. By 1998 he was only ever allowed on for the FA Cup and England matches, where he sported his St George's Cross bowtie (that year's World Cup opening ceremony included the brilliant sight of a 'We Hate Jimmy Hill, He's A Poof' banner being beamed to billions of homes worldwide), and so it perhaps wasn't surprising when the Beeb announced that they'd be sad to see him go, but if he wouldn't mind, the door was over there. Undeterred he moved to Sky, hosting THE LAST WORD on Sky Sports News, and now the Sunday Supplement from his picturesque fake kitchen in Isleworth. And there was also the notorious appearance on FANTASY FOOTBALL ("Note: Jimmy had spent all afternoon drinking at the Fulham end-of-season dinner"), the sponsored beard removal for charity (who he does a lot of work for), buying Fulham for a quid to stop it going bust, and loads more too. But he's never worked out how announce 0-0s properly ("nought-nought", for Christ's sake).