Radio

Between 1949 and 1951 Hancock made many appearances on Variety Bandbox (the first being on 9th January 1949), Flotsam Follies in 1950 and Kaleidoscope in 1951 as well as numerous one-off appearances. It was during 1951 (between August and December) that Hancock made a weekly (latterly fortnightly) appearance in Happy-Go-Lucky in a self-contained sketch called the Eager Beavers alongside Peter Butterworth, Graham Stark and Bill Kerr. This series was not well received and Ray Galton and Alan Simpson were called in to write the last 6 scripts to try to improve the ratings. This was Tony’s introduction to Ray and Alan although they did not write for him in this series as the Eager Beavers sketch was contracted to other writers.

At the same time (between August 1951 and January 1952) Tony appeared as Archie Andrew’s tutor in the second series of Educating Archie. Written by Eric Sykes and Sid Colin, the series ran to 26 episodes.

Hancock’s next regular appearances were in Calling All Forces during 1952. During its run it changed its name to Forces All-Star Bill and finally Star Bill. Early scripts were by Bob Monkhouse and Denis Goodwin but, once again, Galton & Simpson were asked to write the last 6 scripts because the writers were on holiday. From the second series in 1953, Galton & Simpson became the main writers with the final programme being broadcast on 2nd May 1954. Two sketches from episode 4 of the second series of Star Bill on 21/3/1954 are in the BBC archive and a number of programmes featuring Hancock were discovered in the Bob Monkhouse archive.  These have all been released across the four Hancock’s Half Hour Collectibles volumes. By November in the same year, the very first edition of a new show Hancock’s Half Hour would be broadcast and full details of these broadcasts can be found in this section.

Once Hancock’s Half Hour finished on the radio on 29/12/59, so ended Tony’s radio career. Tony made few other radio appearances, with most appearances being interviews. One notable exception was ‘Ancock’s Anthology, broadcast on 25/12/64 in which Hancock talked, read from Stephen Leacock and A.A. Milne, introduced records and interviewed Stirling Moss. a good quality recording of this programme was released in the first volume of Hancock’s Half Hour Collectibles.

Over the last few years, since the advent of Radio 4 Extra (formerly Radio 7),there have been weekly repeats of Hancock’s Half Hour and occasional appearances of Hancock’s Half Hour in compilation programmes.   Its great to have Hancock back on the radio for everyone to enjoy.