A FORMER Bolton woman is trying to find out more about her famous grandfather - comedian Ted Lune.

Kellie Heyes, aged 34, who grew up in Tonge Moor, now lives in Oxford and has embarked on a quest to find out as much as she can about the Ainsworth-born star.

Her enquiries included an email to the Bolton Evening News and I have been able to provide her with some of the information which is in our files.

Ted Lune - real name Harold Garnett - hit the big time when he played Private Leonard Bone in The Army Game, a successful Granada television show in the late 1950s.

Kellie, who went to Moorgate Primary and Breightmet High (now the Withins School), heard about her grandfather for the first time when she was about 14 and has been intrigued ever since.

"It is like laying a ghost to rest," she said. "I want to compile a compendium to hand down to my four-year-old son Ben when he is older."

Kellie, who has worked as a children's entertainer in holiday camps, said her mum, Mrs Lynne Timms of Entwistle Street, Tonge Moor, was the daughter of the comedian and his first wife, Florence.

The couple were divorced and Ted married again, to an entertainer known professionally as Valerie Joy, and lived in the south.

The young Harold Garnett left school at the age of 15 and served an engineering apprenticeship at Thomas Ryder and Son Ltd, Turner Bridge, Bolton. He started entertaining when he recited poems such as The Lion and Albert at works socials.

Later he became well-known in the Bolton and Farnworth areas before turning professional in 1947.

Harold took his stage name from the River Lune and his brother's first name.

He had his first big break on the radio show Variety Fanfare and in the 1950s he had his own programme - Get Lune.

But he made his name nationally in The Army Game, a major sitcom which everybody talked about.

The lad from Cockey Moor, as he was known, became famous for his goggle eyes and gangling appearance. Somebody once described him as "the animated hair-pin".

Fellow Army Game cast members included Michael Medwin, Alfie Bass, Charles Hawtrey, Bernard Bresslaw, Bill Fraser and Dick Emery.

In 1959 he made a guest appearance in a Frankie Vaughan film - The Lady is a Square - as a comic dishwasher.

Ted Lune died in 1968, aged 46, after a long illness.

His catchphrase - familiar in local clubs and pubs long before it was heard by wider audiences - was "I had to come because they sent for me."

If anybody can help Kellie with her quest for more information, her e-mail address is kellieheyes@yahoo.co.uk

Her postal address is 117 Herschel Crescent, Littlemoor, Oxford, OX4 3TE.

Pictures - top:GOGGLE-EYED STAR: Ted Lune is best known for fifties sitcom The Army Game.

Bottom: MAKING THEM LAUGH: There is nothing on record to indicate when this photograph was taken, but it looks as though Ted was meeting Bolton area fans some time in the late 1950s or early 1960s.