Lifestyle: The Little Waster Makes Good

The north east’s finest flat-capped stand-up, Bobby Thompson, talks about his life in comedy.

The Little Waster's monologues are spiced with reference to a past that only the north east fully experienced.' With his trademark tatty woollen gansey, flat cap and Woodbine tab, Bobby Thompson pedalled a comedy of debt, dole and marital war in perfect pitmatic dialect. This insightful TV portrait reveals the roots of his sparkling northern wit, from early life in a Durham pit village to show biz stardom. But the comic genius of this stand-up legend failed to travel south.

This superb Tyne Tees TV documentary was broadcast on the 2nd May 1973 as ‘Wor Bobby’, part of the About Britain series, and in the regional Lifestyle series as ‘The Little Waster Makes Good’ in 1976.