Ludicrous Lion (performed by John Silver, voiced by Walker Edmiston impersonating WC Fields) - A lion who works as a peddler and owns a horse-drawn wagon.

Veteran comic Charlie Chester, a fellow member of the Water Rats showbiz charity, said: 'He was like a cross between Robb Wilton and WC Fields with that big mournful expression on his face.

But always - and Addams was a fan of WC Fields - there was the wit.

WC Fields (January 29, 1880 - December 25, 1946) was an American comic actor.

Which makes him a wit, but also an unlikely standard bearer for WC Fields.

Charlie Chaplin, WC Fields, Stanley Holloway, Stan Laurel and Marie Lloyd all performed there, when the Hackney Empire was a music hall.

The rest of the First Division, to twist WC Fields slightly, will be anxious not to give an injury-hit Liverpool an even break.

That same year, Fellows appeared with WC Fields in Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch playing Australia Wiggs, one of five children being brought up in a shanty town by their poverty-stricken mother whose husband had deserted her.

The group improvised a series of comic and mock-romantic scenes, which, according to one critic, "contains enough cruelty jokes to have made WC Fields envious."

Without his penchant for WC Fields and Mort Sahl, he might have fully been what he almost is, the American Eric Rohmer.