The Man in the Mac and the Kid with the Pritt Stick: Britain's Cartoon Background Crowd Get Their Statues

Somewhere in the background of almost every British cartoon, a man in a beige mac is sighing. He has no name, no subplot and, on a bad week, no eyebrows. And yet he is doing more narrative work than the lead: he is the reason the street outside looks like a street rather than a corridor with a lamp post in it.

We have spent years eulogising the heroes, the villains and the voice artists. Time, then, to build a small plinth in the car park for the people who never got a close-up. Welcome to the Hall of Fame for Britain's cartoon crowd — the ones drawn at half the size and given twice the truth.

The induction rules (there is no ceremony, which is the point)

To qualify, a character must:

• appear at least three times, usually in the same shot;
• have a maximum of one line of dialogue, often just 'oi';
• never be named on screen or in the credits;
• communicate an entire regional economy through posture alone.

Anything above that and they're a supporting character. We're not here for supporting characters. We're here for the bloke in the anorak.

Class of the Sighing Bus Queue

The undisputed royalty. Four figures standing at a stop, drawn with the tired shoulder geometry of people who know the 14.40 isn't coming. The genius of the bus queue is its democracy: pensioner, schoolkid, bloke holding a rolled-up newspaper like a baton. Nobody speaks. Everybody judges the driver.

In cel-animated Britain, this queue existed for one gag — the bus arrives, someone's coat gets caught in the door — but in the drawings it also quietly tells you the town is small, the service is poor and the weather is a personality trait. That is world-building achieved with three rectangles and a packet of crisps.

Class of the Schoolyard Greek Chorus

Two or three kids at the back of the playground whose entire job is to chant a nickname in unison. They never advance the plot. They are not bullies exactly, and they are not friends exactly; they are an atmosphere with knees.

What makes them immortal is the animation equivalent of typecasting: the kid in the too-big jumper, the one with the pudding-bowl haircut, the one whose trainers squeak on the tarmac. Every viewer went to school with all three. That's not lazy design — it's documentary.

Class of the Pub Regular Who Has Seen It All

Back of shot, half a pint, never once removes his coat. He is present for every catastrophe in the episode and reacts with a single eyebrow and a slow turn of the head towards the door.

He is the audience's stand-in, and he is always right. When the pub collapses into a hole, he finishes his drink. When the villain is revealed, he goes back to his crossword. There is a whole philosophy of British resilience in one bloke drawn as a shape.

Class of the Pavement Witness

A single pedestrian, walking left to right, entirely unaware of the exploding building behind him. This is animation's cheapest and most reliable joke, and it still works because the design is so specific: sensible shoes, carrier bag, purposeful stride. He isn't running from the plot. He's got a bus to catch and a tea going cold.

Class of the Canteen Ladle Wielder

Every workplace cartoon needs an institution, and every institution needs a dinner lady, a foreman or a bloke in a hairnet with a ladle and a stare. They get one shot, one splat, one withering look at the main character's tray. Perfect economy.

The people who actually drew the elbows

Here's the part we should be shouting about more often. Background crowds are the inbetweener's revenge. While the lead animator got the glory shot of the hero sliding into a bin, somebody else had to draw 340 near-identical shoppers, a wall of pigeons, and a passing bus with nine faces in the window — sometimes for a shot that lasts four seconds and is then covered by a caption.

In British studios doing telly-speed animation, that labour was often the difference between a show that felt like a programme and a show that felt like an animated storyboard. The crowd artist is the reason a scene has depth, gossip and a sense of a town continuing after the credits. Give them a plaque. Give them two.

Nominations are now open (well, they're open to you)

We want your unsung regulars. The specific ones. Not 'generic shoppers' but the woman with the tartan trolley who appears in precisely one street scene per series. The kid in the red anorak who is always on the third swing. The dog outside the chip shop that never reacts to anything.

Tell us who they are, which show they haunt and why they matter, and we'll start a proper roll of honour. Send us a description, a rough timestamp if you've got the DVD, or just a passionate paragraph written from memory at 11pm. That's how all the best archive work starts.

They never got a catchphrase. They never got a toy. But take the crowd out of a British cartoon and what's left is two people shouting in an empty room — which, admittedly, is also very British, but it isn't the same.