THIRTY Years of Last of the Summer Wine by Morris Bright and Robert Ross is the definitive tribute to television's longest-running, best-loved sitcom. Compo, Foggy and Clegg, and their successors, have become a national institution as the elderly eccentrics enjoy their second childhood in a Yorkshire village.

The series has been running for 30 years, and been nominated four times as Best Situation Comedy by BAFTA, and won the TRIC Award in 1982 for Best Comedy Series.

Bright and Ross retrace the absorbing history of Last of the Summer Wine, celebrating and interviewing the show's creators and stars, as well as revealing behind-the-scenes anecdotes and biographies of the actors. The result is a thoroughly researched and engagingly-written tribute to a TV legend, illustrated with original BBC archive photographs, many of which have never been seen before.

Chapters include "The Winos" which features exclusive interviews with the regular stars -- Peter Sallis, Bill Owen and Brian Wilde, plus Michael Bates, Michael Aldridge and Frank Thornton, and provides fascinating insights and fond memories of making the show. A chapter called "The Stronger Sex" features the show's well-known female stars including Kathy Staff -- the infamous Nora Batty, and Jean Alexander who plays Auntie Wainwright.

A must for all Last of the Summer Wine fans, this book is the definitive celebration of Britain's longest-running TV comedy show. (BBC Books £12.99 paperback).

Ten things you never knew about Last of the Summer Wine:

1. Last of the Summer Wine is the world's longest-running television comedy series with every one of its 200+ episodes penned by the same writer, Roy Clarke.

2. The show was titled The Last of the Summer Wine for the pilot episode broadcast in January 1973. By the time the show became a series later that year, the first "The" had been dropped. The show's original planned title had been The Library Mob because of the amount of time the three men spent in the local library.

3. Writer Roy Clarke was against the casting of Bill Owen as Compo, saying he could not imagine how a typical cockney could be convincing as his idea of a Yorkshire layabout. He was quick to admit he got it wrong.

4. The part of Clegg, played by Peter Sallis, was written with Peter in mind and the character is the one that writer Roy Clarke feels closest too.

5. Kathy Staff is not as big as Nora Batty, and has been adding padding to her costumes during her entire 29 year stint on the show.

6. The role of everyone's favourite third man Foggy was offered to Brian Wilde after the actor complained he had less and less to do as shy and retiring prison warder Mr Barrowclough in the Ronnie Barker prison-based comedy hit "Porridge". Last of the Summer Wine's producer Sydney Lottery was also the producer for Porridge.

7. On Christmas Day 1981, the seasonal special episode scored more viewers than the British television premiere of "Gone with the Wind", which was scheduled, in exactly the same slot the next night, leading journalists everywhere asked Kathy Staff what it was like to be more attractive than Scarlett O'Hara!

8. Last of the Summer Wine was the first comedy show to produce a full-length film version made for television, ahead of other shows such as "Only Fools and Horses". "Getting Sam Home" -- a 90-minute film -- was broadcast on December 27, 1983.

9. Guest stars to have appeared on the show both credited and uncredited include: Sir Norman Wisdom, Oscar winner George Chakiris, Matthew Kelly, Ron Moody and John Cleese.

10. Dame Thora Hird made a special guest appearance in the show on January 1, 1986. Fifteen years later, she is still in almost every episode and is still billed every week as making a "special guest appearance".