Aynuk and Ayli are two mythical characters from the

Black Country The Black Country is an area of England's West Midlands. It is mainly urban, covering most of the Dudley and Sandwell metropolitan boroughs, with the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall and the City of Wolverhampton. The road between Wolverhampto ...

that figure in a large number of local jokes. Their names are literal, phonetical translations of the names ''Enoch'' and ''Eli'' into the Black Country accent. They also appeared as a cartoon strip in the ''

Express & Star The ''Express & Star'' is a regional evening newspaper in Britain. Founded in 1889, it is based in Wolverhampton, England, and covers the West Midlands county and Staffordshire. Currently edited by Martin Wright, the ''Express & Star'' publis ...

''. Aynuk and Ayli were personified by a

comedy Comedy is a genre of dramatic works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. Origins Comedy originated in ancient Greec ...

duo consisting of John Plant (7 December 1951 – 21 November 2006) and Alan Smith (1937 – 22 March 2022).BBC Midlands Tonight, broadcast 13 October 2017 /ref> They performed across central England from 1984. They were also employed on at least one occasion by an NHS trust to help medical staff from overseas become accustomed to the Black Country accent. Plant died in November 2006 after a short illness, two weeks before what would have been his 55th birthday. He was buried in St Andrew's church near his lifelong home in Netherton, near

Dudley Dudley ( , ) is a market town in the West Midlands, England, southeast of Wolverhampton and northwest of Birmingham. Historically part of Worcestershire, the town is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. In the ...

References

External links

Tributes as comic Ayli dies
* English comedy duos Culture in the West Midlands (region) {{comedy-stub