Fictional Mancs and Scousers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Gallagher

'Shameless' ran from 2004 to 2013. The first series centred around the Gallagher family: alcoholic patriarch Frank (David Threlfall) and his six children Fiona, Lip, Stella, Carl, Debbie and Liam. He also has an adopted son, Ian. Frank is unemployed and has a tendency to go into drunken rants and quote Shakespeare.

As the series progressed, the cast expanded; a rival family, the Maguires, moved into the estate in the second series and several new characters joined the cast in the fourth. An American version starring William H Macy was made in 2011, with the setting changed to Chicago.

Answer: Hellblazer

'Hellblazer' was created by Alan Moore, Stephen R Bissette and John Ridgway. John Constantine is a rude, cynical warlock and conman, and although he is based on Sting, a Geordie, he is actually from Liverpool. He originally appeared in the 'American Gothic' arc of 'Swamp Thing', but became the star of his own comic in 1988.

He comes from a long line of magicians and is able to use powers such as teleportation and telekinesis. He is a member of the Justice League Dark and the Trenchcoat Brigade. Keanu Reeves played him in the 2005 film 'Constantine', albeit without a Scouse accent.

Answer: Eagle

If you were a British boy growing up in the fifties and sixties, you may well have read 'Eagle'. The 'Dan Dare' stories are set in the 1990s and the character was created by Frank Hampson, who was also the original illustrator. A Mancunian by birth, Dan Dare was an alumnus of Rossall School (a real-life public school in Lancashire).

He was originally intended to be a chaplain but ended up being a space pilot and martial artist instead. Accompanied by his manservant Digby (a native of Wigan), he often battled the Mekon, the green, round-headed leader of the alien Treens (if you've ever read the 'Molesworth' books, you might remember Nigel Molesworth being a fan of stories about the 'Pukon' and his Treens).

Answer: Shirley Valentine

'Shirley Valentine' is a one-act play about a disillusioned housewife who goes on holiday to Greece with a friend for two weeks and enjoys it so much that she ends up living there and getting a job in a hotel. The film expands on the premise a bit more; when Shirley (Pauline Collins) goes to Greece, she has an affair with Costas, a Greek tavern owner.

She falls in love, not with him, but with living itself and asks Costas for a job after catching him seducing another woman. Joe, Shirley's husband, waits for her at the airport to no avail and eventually flies out to Greece to meet her. By this time, Shirley is working in the tavern and providing British food for tourists, and feels like a new person.

She and Joe are reunited, but the end of the film is left open.

Answer: Frasier

Jane Leeves, who played Daphne, was actually from Sussex, which explains her rather questionable 'Manc' accent! Daphne is a physiotherapist whom Frasier Crane hires to look after his father Martin, and also works as his live-in housekeeper. She comes from a working-class family and is one of nine children, and used to be a child actress in a show called 'Mind Your Knickers'.

She also has a shoplifting habit and claims to be psychic, with many of her visions turning out to be true. Niles falls in love with her, although Daphne is oblivious to this until Frasier points it out, and the two are later married.

Answer: Brookside

'Brookside', taking its name from its setting of 'Brookside Close', was originally known for its gritty storylines written by Jimmy McGovern. Originally launched in 1982, it ended in 2003 and launched the careers of various actors, including Ricky Tomlinson, Anna Friel (whose character Beth was involved in the first pre-watershed lesbian kiss on British TV), Amanda Burton and Claire Sweeney. Later in the '90s, it became more of a typical OTT soap opera with plots involving incest, religious cults and stuff blowing up. Barry Grant, one of the recurring villains, appeared in both the first and final episodes.

He started out as a petty thief before getting heavily involved in gang crime and setting Jimmy Corkhill's shop on fire. In the final episode, he plans to avenge the murder of his brother Damon.

Answer: The '70s

'Life on Mars' is a police procedural in which DI Sam Tyler (John Simm) finds himself transported from 2006 to 1973 after a road accident. He is working at the same station, but for Manchester and Salford Police, who would later become Greater Manchester Police.

In the sequel, 'Ashes to Ashes', psychologist Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) finds herself in a similar situation, but this time it is '80s London instead of '70s Manchester. In both cases, they are working under DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), an old school police officer who doesn't believe in the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' and is willing to falsify evidence if necessary.

In 'Ashes to Ashes', Hunt has transferred to the Metropolitan Police. He is later revealed to be an angel who takes people to the afterlife; all the main characters are in fact dead, and Hunt himself had been shot dead in 1953.

In the American version, Hunt is played by Harvey Keitel.

Answer: Telekinesis

Finn Samson (Nathan McMullen) joined the cast of 'Misfits' after the departure of Simon Bellamy (Iwan 'Ramsay Bolton' Rheon) and Alisha Daniels (Antonia Thomas). Like the other characters, Finn got his powers after a storm and is a young offender doing community service.

He is naive and childish, but with a hidden dark side. Although he has telekinesis, he is unsure how to use it. His girlfriend Sadie has the power of suggestion, which she uses to manipulate him into becoming an ideal boyfriend, and he has to tie her up to stop her using it.

In the fifth series, Finn gets the power to convert people to Satanism, but ends up becoming possessed by the Devil himself and only loses his power after Alex, a barman who can depower people by having sex with them, rapes him.

He ends up as a probation worker and kills Karen, a member of the Jumper Posse with camouflage powers, by attacking her with a piano.

Answer: William Roache

Ken Barlow started 'Coronation Street' as a political activist from a working-class background. Although critics mocked him as 'boring', over his time in the soap, he has had four wives (Valerie, Janet and Deirdre, who he married twice), fathered four children (Lawrence, twins Susan and Peter, and Daniel, who was revealed to be Ken's mystery attacker in 2017), and also adopted Deirdre's evil daughter Tracy.

He had a rivalry with Cockney factory owner Mike Baldwin, after Mike had an affair with Deirdre in 1983; the storyline was so popular that the scoreboard at Old Trafford even displayed a message that Ken and Deirdre were staying together to a horde of Manchester United fans! Roache broke the Guinness World Record for longest-serving actor in a soap opera in 2010 when he hit the fifty-year mark. Roache's son James played Ken Barlow in 'The Road to Coronation Street', a series about the making of the soap.

Answer: red dwarf

Dave Lister, played by Craig Charles, is a vending machine technician and the sole survivor of a nuclear accident on the mining ship 'Red Dwarf', which kills the entire crew. Lister survives as he has been sent into stasis as punishment for sneaking his cat Frankenstein on board, but due to the radiation levels on the ship, Holly (the ship's computer) has had to keep him in stasis for three million years until the radiation died down, by which point the human race is extinct. Lister is later joined by one of the crew members, Arnold Rimmer, who has been resurrected as a hologram by Holly (Holly's rationale being that Rimmer and Lister's personalities suit each other). During Lister's time in stasis, Frankenstein - who was pregnant - has become the mother of a cat civilisation which evolved into humanoid creatures and left the ship; the sole remaining creature, dubbed 'the Cat', becomes the third member of the group and Kryten, a mechanoid, becomes the fourth when the crew find his wrecked spaceship.

Lister's main traits include a love of spicy Indian food, pool skills (which he uses to save the ship by playing pool with planets) and terrible hygiene. His original plan was to buy a farm in Fiji and he got a job as a taxi driver, and then as a technician, to save up for it. He is a huge fan of 'It's a Wonderful Life' and zero-gravity football and an alternate universe version of him named his twin sons, Jim and Bexley, after his favourite player, Jim Bexley-Speed.