Tony Hancock stars with Sid James and Kenneth Williams in the legendary BBC Radio comedy series.
Ray Galton (Author)
Ray Galton and Alan Simpson met in a sanatorium in Surrey, where
they were both being treated for TB. Ray Galton remembers noticing
the six-foot-four Simpson and thinking he looked surprisingly large
- 'you expect everyone in a sanatorium to be thin and weedy, and he
was the biggest guy I'd ever seen'. During two years in the same
ward, they listened to comedy shows together and also wrote a
series of their own, creating a radio room in a linen cupboard.
Having left the sanatorium within a few months of each other, they
decided to get a professional opinion of their work and sent a
sketch they had written called The Pirate Sketch to the BBC.
They were asked to go in for an interview, and soon found
themselves writing for the sketch show Happy Go Lucky. Over
the next two years they continued to write sketches for a number of
big names, before coming up with the idea for Hancock's Half
Hour. Although the BBC took some persuading, eventually the
show was scheduled, initially for radio but later as a television
series. A phenomenally successful ten years later, Galton and
Simpson were themselves very well known names.
After Hancock's Half Hour they wrote Comedy Playhouse
for the BBC, out of which came their second huge television and
radio hit, Steptoe & Son. In 1977 they wrote The Galton &
Simpson Playhouse, produced by Yorkshire Television for
ITV.
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