North East comedian, Ross Noble, is leading a social media campaign to put little-known funnyman Tommy Trinder at the top of a Channel 4 poll.

According to an article by The Independent, modern comedians want to see Trinder, who kept the nation smiling throughout the war years, featured in the new programme listing the top 100 comedians in the world.

The campaign is encouraging web users to vote for Trinder via social media sites. While Noble has used his Twitter account, Simon Donald, the creator of Viz, has set up a Facebook page for Trinder.

A post on Noble’s Twitter account said: “Tommy Trinder was a top act and would be funny to have an act from 50s top list. Last time I was ahead of Lenny Bruce so it’s bollocks anyway.”

The campaign, that has received public backing from comedians Tim Michin, Alan Davies, Jason Manford and Simon Donald, is said to be a protest against favouring new crowd-pleasers against great old British comics.

However, the efforts may be useless. Public votes will only be used as a guide and a panel of judges have been advised not to be “swayed” by the campaign.

Sean Doherty, executive producer at Channel 4 told the online comedy news website Chortle: “The panel is there to safeguard against the block voting which goes on. Last time we did it, after a few weeks voting and thousands of votes cast, some comedians went from being 120 to top 5 over a weekend because of the block voting involved, so we’re monitoring really carefully.”

Source: The Independent