Tony HANCOCK (1924-1968) Hancock’s Half Hour – The Best
of Tony Hancock
CD 1
The Wild Man of the Woods [29:29]
A Sunday Afternoon at Home [26:07]
The East Cheam Drama Festival [21:45]
CD 2
The Publicity Photograph [12:25]
The Secret Life of Tony Hancock [9:14]
The Blood Donor [28:18]
The Radio Ham [27:55]
Tony Hancock, with Sidney James; Hattie Jacques; Bill Kerr; Kenneth Williams;
June Whitfield; Patrick Cargill; Hugh Lloyd; John Bluthal; Clive Dunn; Derek
Guyler; Annie Leake; Frank Thornton
Written by Alan Simpson and Ray Galton
Music by Wally Stott
No recording details given
FORUM FRC6202 [77:29 + 78:02]
There is no indication anywhere on these discs as to where the recordings
come from. An excellent accompanying note by Gavin Dixon mentions the Pye
label LPs that Hancock fans will remember. Some, perhaps all, of these recording
may come from that source.
The aforementioned fans who don’t already have these episodes of the celebrated
series “Hancock’s Half Hour” will jump at the chance to acquire them now.
Two of them, “The Blood Donor” and “The Radio Ham”, have been available in
several forms over the years. Potential purchasers should also be warned that,
as can be seen from the timings, three of the episodes are not complete.
Hancock was a great comic, but the humour is certainly of its time, and its
appreciation depends very much on the listener’s knowledge and understanding
of what it was like to live in Britain in the late 1950s and the 1960s. I’m
not sure that younger listeners, accustomed to contemporary comedy, would
find much to laugh at here.
As the liner note tells us, “Hancock’s Half Hour” was a forerunner of situation
comedy. Hancock himself was portrayed as a show business personality, none
too successful, taciturn and unsatisfied. His housemates were the brainless
Australian, Bill, played by Bill Kerr, and Miss Pugh, whose generous form
was the subject of frequent Hancock asides: introducing her in “The East Cheam
Drama Festival” he reminds the audience that she is “best known for her sterling
performance in ‘Moby Dick’.” She was played by Hattie Jacques. The third member
of the household was Sid, a cockney wide boy, played by Sidney James. They
are all present in “A Sunday Afternoon at Home”, whose plot could hardly be
simpler. It’s Sunday, there’s nothing to do, and everybody is bored. The neighbour
calls – played by Kenneth Williams – and, after telling Hancock that his radio
programmes are going downhill, does animal impressions until midnight. And
that’s it. Of such slim and unpromising material virtuoso scriptwriters Ray
Galton and Alan Simpson created a half hour of comedy. The famous Hancock
persona, as well as the famous Hancock timing – the first three minutes or
so are made up of little more than Hancock sighing and uttering such expressions
as “Dear, oh dear!” – contributes to the mix, but the writers really understood
the possibilities of their star performer. If you’ve never lived through a
1960s English Sunday, though, when you even had to wait longer than usual
for the pubs to open, you might miss a lot of the basis on which the humour
is constructed.
“The Publicity Photograph” begins with what now seem rather lame gags about
turning the record over. Sid has decided that Hancock’s publicity handouts
are looking dated, and so takes him to have some new photographs done. The
photographer is very camp: called Hilary St Clair, he is played by Kenneth
Williams. Only too conscious that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s
ear, he nonetheless sets to work photographing Hancock as a rugged, South
Sea islander. Bare legs are required, so Sid tears Hancock’s trousers off.
Hancock: “So much for me clerical grey drainpipes.” The photos turn out to
be a revelation. “Wallaby Jim of the Islands!” exclaims Miss Pugh.
In “The Secret Life of Anthony Hancock” our hero is an ace test-pilot being
briefed by his CO before a particularly dangerous maiden flight. “Once you’ve
gone through the heat barrier metal can melt into jelly,” warns the Commander.
Hancock’s reply is superbly timed. “What flavour, sir?” he drawls.
In “The Wild Man of the Woods” Hancock has decided to withdraw from the rat
race and return to nature, living in the open with the birds and the beasts.
You’ll need to listen to it if you want to learn just how he finds himself,
and not for the first time, the victim of Sid’s entrepreneurial skills. A
remarkable passage occurs when a Tarzan-like individual appears. “Good evening”,
says Kenneth Williams. “The hedgehogs call me Jungle Jim … I was the sole
survivor of a tandem crash.” The passage reminds us just how much camp humour
there was to be had on BBC radio at this time. “Here, I like your loincloth,”
says Williams, “very racy … I wish I was clever with me hands like that.”
It was to reach remarkable levels of daring with Kenneth Horne, the innuendo
very near the bone, as it were, and this at a time when male homosexuality
was a crime.
“The Blood Donor” and “The Radio Ham” were both originally written for television,
but were later adapted and issued on LP. Hancock is magnificently pretentious
and pompous as a citizen doing his bit for his fellow man. The writing is
just brilliant, and fits Hancock like a glove.
Like many very funny men, Tony Hancock was not an easy person. He was constantly
seeking perfection in his work, though rarely satisfied, and searched fruitlessly
for answers to wider personal and philosophical questions. In 1960 he was
John Freeman’s guest on the television interview programme “Face to Face”.
You can watch this on YouTube. Note how the viewer is treated as an intelligent
member of the species. It is generally accepted that Hancock’s mental state
began to degenerate from this time, and he became increasingly dependant on
alcohol. He decided his work needed a change of direction, and so left the
BBC. He parted company with his writers too, a fatal mistake. His career never
recovered, and seven years later he was found dead in his Sydney flat surrounded
by empty bottles and prescription drugs.
William Hedley
Perfectly acceptable CD transfers of comedy classics
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