Galton & Simpson
- English
- Writing team
Galton & Simpson: The Collection
A compendium of radio sitcoms and retrospectives celebrating the legendary writing duo.
Ray Galton and Alan Simpson were Britain's best-loved and most successful comedy writing partners. Together, they created two of the greatest sitcoms of all time, Hancock's Half Hour and Steptoe And Son. This compilation brings together some of the finest programmes from their 60-year career, as well as interviews with them both.
Galton & Simpson's Half Hour consists of four comedy dramas: You'll Never Walk Alone (starring Frank Skinner), Impasse (starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb), I Tell You It's Burt Reynolds (starring Rik Mayall and June Whitfield) and The Blood Donor (a remake of a famous Hancock's Half Hour episode, starring Paul Merton). Originally written for television, all were specially adapted for radio by Galton & Simpson and introduced by Paul Merton.
The Galton And Simpson Playhouse features three more adaptations: Naught For Thy Comfort (starring Robert Daws and Nina Wadia), A Clerical Error (starring Keith Barron and June Whitfield) and The Offer, a reworking of the TV script that inspired Steptoe And Son, starring Freddie Jones and John Thomson.
A fourth episode from Playhouse - Clicquot Et Fils, starring Richard Griffiths and Roger Lloyd Pack - can be heard in I Did It My Way: Galton And Simpson, in which the pair chat to Peter Reed and select some of their favourite work. Also included is Hancock's Half Hour: The Threatening Letters; Up Je T'Aime, Frankie Howerd and June Whitfield's parody of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg's hit song; the 1963 Royal Variety Performance sketch seeing Steptoe & Son at Buckingham Palace; Steptoe And Son: Porn Yesterday and classic Hancock's Half Hour TV episode The Radio Ham, recreated before a live audience for an album release in 1961.
Topping off the collection is Very Nearly An Armful - The Galton & Simpson Story. Talking to Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, Stephen Merchant explores how their ground-breaking work brought social realism to British comedy, and helped lay the foundations for modern-day classics like The Office. Contributors include David Mitchell, Ben Elton, Denis Norden and Damaris Hayman, and among the archive interviewees are Tony Hancock, Sid James and Harry H Corbett.
First released: Thursday 17th February 2022
- Distributor: BBC Digital Audio
- Minutes: 450
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