Editing The Likely Lads (section)

==Premise==
The original show followed the friendship of two young [[working class]] men, [[Terry Collier]] ([[James Bolam]]) and [[Bob Ferris (Likely Lads)|Bob Ferris]] ([[Rodney Bewes]]), in the mid-1960s. Bob and Terry are assumed to be in their early 20s (when their ages are revealed in the later [[The Likely Lads (film)|film]], this puts both characters at around 20 when the series started).

After growing up at school and in the [[Scouts]] together, Bob and Terry are working in the same factory, Ellison's Electrical, alongside the older, wiser duo of Cloughie and Jack. The show's humour derived largely from the tensions between Terry's cynical, [[everyman]], working class personality and Bob's ambition to better himself and move to the [[middle class]].

Bob and Terry are two average working class lads growing up (despite Bob's very West-Riding accent) in the industrial [[North East England|North East]], whose hobbies are beer, football and girls. They are street-wise, yet they stumble into one scrape after another as they struggle to enjoy the [[Swinging Sixties]] on their meagre incomes.

At the end of the third and final series in 1966, a depressed and bored Bob attempts to join the [[British Army|Army]] but is rejected because of his [[flat feet]]. Terry, who decides at the last minute to enlist to keep Bob company, is accepted and shipped away for three years.

It was gradually revealed that Terry and Bob's full names are Terence Daniel Collier and Robert Andrew Scarborough Ferris (''Scarborough'' not revealed until the 1970s colour series). According to the later feature film, made in 1976, both ''Lads'' were conceived during the same wartime [[airstrike|air raid]] and were thus born in the same year, 1944.

Although in the colour sequel much is made of Thelma, who is said to have been Bob's childhood sweetheart, she had appeared only once in the original show, in which Bob has no steady girlfriend and is forever seeking one, though Thelma is mentioned in some episodes in series three, including "Rocker" and "Goodbye to All That".