Video: Comedian Charlie Williams honoured by blue plaque in Barnsley

Williams, who was born in Royston, Barnsley, became one of the country’s best-known comedians in the 1970s after spending his younger days playing football, mainly at Doncaster Rovers.

The blue plaque has been put up on the side of the Barnsley Civic, which used to play host to entertainers such as Williams, and is now a refurbished theatre and arts centre.

The idea came from the team working on Barnsley’s new museum and the plaque includes Williams’s famous catchphrase “Hey up me old flower, int it a lovely day?” and also says “A footballer, comedian and entertainer who never forgot his Barnsley roots”.

Speaking at the ceremony, Williams’s widow, Janice Brown, said he was extremely loyal to his home town and asked her to move there from the south of England when they decided to marry in 1985.

She added: “When we met down in Essex in 1983 and then decided to get married I just assumed that Charlie would move down to where I lived with my family.

“But he said no, he was a Barnsley man and he didn’t want to move from Barnsley.”

Williams found national fame on popular ITV show The Comedians in the early 1970s and also hosted The Golden Shot.

In later years he ran a pub in Hoyland and was awarded the MBE in the late 1990s for his charity work.

He died in 2006 after suffering from Parkinson’s disease.