Charlie Williams, the Yorkshire-born standup comic, of Jamaican descent, who shot to fame as one of the regular jokesters in Granada's The Comedians, becoming the first British black comic to enjoy mainstream TV success. His father was a coalminer, who had settled in Royston. After leaving school, Charlie worked at Upton Colliery. He played football for the colliery team, before turning professional, and signing for Doncaster Rovers in 1948. However, it was not until 1955 that, playing centre-half, he became an established first team player. He played 171 times for Rovers in total. Following his retirement from the game in 1959, Williams tried his hand as a singer in local clubs, but it was his comic chat between the songs that was best received, so he decided to move into comedy full-time. In his TV material Williams often poked fun at his colour and racial issues, and so was essentially non-confrontational in style; conversely, his routines often concluded with him getting the better of those who maligned him. – eventually becoming Britain's first well-known black television comedian, with regular appearances on The Comedians. His Yorkshire accent made him unmistakeable. From 1973 to 1974 he was the host of The Golden Shot. In 2004 Charlie Williams was voted Doncaster's all-time cult hero by viewers of the BBC's Football Focus programme. He had suffered Parkinson's Disease and dementia for a number of years.