AS A black man born in Yorkshire in 1928, Charlie Williams stood out as a miner, a professional footballer and a stand-up comedian. He did all three jobs with cheer and stoicism, becoming Britain’s first well-known black comic. He was a star of that lost land of bow-tied comedy that, beyond the alternative revolution, is seen as a primordial broth of mother-in-law routines and racism.

Charlie Williams was born in Royston, near Barnsley, in 1929. His father, a Barbadian, had served with the Royal Engineers in the First World War and then settled in Royston, where he worked as a miner. At the age of 14, Charlie left school to do the same. He was a keen footballer who played for the colliery team. He was spotted by a scout for Doncaster Rovers and signed up under Jackie Bestall. He had to wait until 1950, however, before making his debut in the No 5 shirt.

Williams never made a big deal of what must have been considerable abuse from the terraces. The newspapers invariably recorded appearances by “the coloured player Charlie Williams”. He became the backbone of the team in the 1955/56 season, starting as centre half in every important fixture.

He was more of a frustration than a threat, admitting: “I was never a fancy player, but I could stop them buggers that were.” He scored but once, in the second division away game at Barnsley on March 24, 1956. In retrospect Doncaster fans came to recognise Williams’s spirit, recently voting him the team’s all-time cult hero on the BBC’s Football Focus.

In 1957 Williams sensed that he was past his zenith as a footballer. He embarked on a tour of Northern clubs as a singer with the Jeffrey Trio, with his former teammate Alick Jeffrey, and his father. He left the Rovers in 1959.

He soon learnt that his singing, like his football, was solid but not astonishing, and he found that the audience most enjoyed the patter between the songs. The jokes took over.

Williams’s routines were peppered with the icons of Northern subsistence — boxes of broken biscuits, terraced houses, outside lavatories, the coalface, scrumping apples — yet he was burdened with having always to address his colour; and skilfully he turned this into his edge: “It was so sunny today I thought I’d been deported.” Hecklers were told: “If you don’t shut up, I’ll move in next door to you.” These lines were not tired ones then, but controlled explosions that took the tension from the crowd. He needed to let his audience know that he could see their fears and misgivings.

Today Williams is reviled by some, along with other black comics of the day such as Joss White and Sammy Thomas, for playing up to the audience’s prejudices. This is to forget, perhaps, just how impermeable these prejudices were, and that Williams had primarily to survive his stage time with body and dignity intact — sometimes between the likes of Bernard Manning and Jim Bowen.

He did much to confound expectations. A large, cheery black man with a broad Yorkshire accent was both alarming and disarming in the late 1950s. Yet Williams’s appearances on The Comedians were the first time many in Barnsley had heard their native tongue spoken on air. Moreover, Williams had lived through the war and rationing, dug coal and played football; while many of his countrymen feared the tide of immigration that Williams presaged, few would deny that their best-loved comic, with his catchphrase of “Eh up me old flower”, was a true Yorkshireman. The universality of his humour subtly gave the lie to the expectation that “rivers of blood” would soon follow.

In 1972 Williams appeared on This is Your Life, and soon after took over the television gameshow The Golden Shot. He only lasted a year, but remained a popular stage entertainer, with bookings at the London Palladium. In 1973 he published his autobiography, Ee — I’ve Had Some Laughs.

Williams was appointed MBE in 1999. In 2000, frail and suffering from Parkinson’s, he received a lifetime achievement accolade at the Black Comedy Awards, acknowledging, at last, that he had “broken down barriers”. It may be some years yet before his contribution, like that of Rudolph Walker in Love Thy Neighbour, can be soberly discussed. The cauldron is stirred further by his defence of the Robinson’s golliwog in the 1980s and statements, no less potent today, that immigrants to Britain should expect to become British.

Williams was proud of his achievements and his heritage. “Just because I make jokes, it doesn’t mean I’m willing to be walked over,” he said. “The great thing about this country is that justified complaints can be heard and get some action.”

Charlie Williams, MBE, footballer and comedian, was born on December 23, 1928. He died on September 2, 2006, aged 77.