The days when Cilla Black and Roy Castle topped the bill in Blackpool

Let's start in 1900 when Wilkie Bard, the Quaint Comedian, starred in what was possibly the resort's first non-pierrot summer show; eight weeks at the new Alhambra Theatre.

Wilkie was Manchester-born William Smith (1870-1944). Local legend said that in the 1890s he was a singing waiter at Blackpool's Foxhall Hotel as Will Gibbard, his mother's maiden name. It evolved to Wilkie Bard because of a supposed resemblence (with make-up) to William Shakespeare.

He was a headliner here until the late 1920s with character comedy and tongue-twisting songs like She Sells Seashells Beside the Sea Shore.

He is credited with creating the "interrupted turn" using stooges and audience "plants."

His name lived on for decades as rhyming slang for Equity Card.

Of more recent memory are the Bachelors, the Irish trio who topped the charts with melodic songs in the era of rock-'n'-roll.

Con and Dec Clusky and John Stokes scored with Diane and I Believe before they opened at the Central Pier for the 1964 summer season.

With further hits like Ramona, they topped the 1966 season bill at the ABC, the 1970 show at the Opera House and the 1978 season at the ABC. The original trio also did 45 Sundays at the Opera House up to 1982.

Billed second in that 1966 season was Cilla Black (1943-2015) who first came to the resort in 1964 in a Queen's Theatre Easter Sunday concert, three weeks after her chart-topping Anyone Who Had a Heart.

Cilla shared top billing with Roy Castle in the 1969 ABC summer show and was "sole top" for the 1972 season at the Opera House, where she also occasionally starred in Sunday concerts until the mid 1980s.

The funniest woman in Blackpool summer shows was sketch comic Hylda Baker (1895-1986). She headed four summer seasons in four years (1955-58) at the Queen's, the South Pier, the Palace and the Winter Gardens Pavilion.

She later starred in three Grand Theatre summer comedies, notably a stage spin-off of her TV success, Nearest and Dearest, in 1970.

Two actors chalked up more than 50 years at the Grand.

Trevor Bannister (1934-2011) came in January, 1957, as a policeman in Agatha Christie's Spider's Web and was Billy Liar in an April, 1962, visit of the Waterhouse-Hall play.

After his Mr Lucas in TV's Are You Being Served? he starred with Barbara Windsor and Jack Smethurst in the Grand's 1981 summer play The Mating Game and made six weekly visits in comedies until 2010, a span of 53 years.

Peter Byrne's first local spell was the 1952 Grand summer season, with Jack Warner in the crime drama The Blue Lamp. They returned in 1954's The Archers.

After his long run in TV'S Dixon of Dock Green, Peter made nine Grand visits in dramas, ending with Agatha Christie's Verdict in 2011. A span of 59 years!

More busy B names next week.