Article: Controversial comic Manning dies.

Controversial Manchester stand-up comedian Bernard Manning has died in hospital, aged 76.

Manning was born in 1930 in Ancoats, one of Manchester's poorest suburbs, the second of three brothers and two sisters.

"We had absolutely nothing,'' he once recalled. "One cold water tap in the house, no bath, outside toilet''.

Manning left school at 14 to work in a tobacco factory, and then in his father's greengrocers, before becoming a singer with the Oscar Rabin band.

He was set on the path to fame and subsequent notoriety with a 1971 Granada TV series, The Comedians, based on an act developed at his club.

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