Neil Pearson

Radio Times review

I'm guessing I wasn't the only one who died a little at the thought of this programme. While the discovery of lost episodes is intriguing, the thought of another actor stepping into a hero's shoes usually fills fans with dread -- especially when that hero is the still very much-loved Tony Hancock.

That said, Kevin McNally is quite wonderful here as The Lad himself in this first of five episodes re-recorded to mark the 60th anniversary of Hancock's Half-Hour. Producers Ed Morrish and Neil Pearson have resisted the urge to tinker even slightly with the script and it's testament to the genius of writers Galton and Simpson that the words still sparkle.

Bringing Hancock's Half Hour back to life

Neil Pearson explains how he came to resurrect lost episodes of Hancock's Half Hour with its celebrated writers.

Lost comedy work among rare radio scripts published

A script for the fourth episode of the 1955 Hancock's Half Hour show catalogued along with those for and by the likes of Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers. The scripts are being released by comic actor and rare bookseller Neil Pearson (Drop the Dead Donkey, Brian Gulliver's Travels).

This is a great series, conceived and written by Bill Dare, a name more usually associated with comedy production. Brian Gulliver (Neil Pearson) is in a mental hospital, recounting memories to his disenchanted daughter. He's been far away, caught up in strange lands among peoples with outlandish ways. The more he talks the more we begin to see what he's on about, grasping the point of Dare's truly Swiftian satire on modern life. This time, among the people of Chamanoa, our Gulliver is swept into the war between its Naturites and Nurturites.

Visions were interpreted as mental illness in Brian Gulliver's Travels but the point of Bill Dare's highly original format was to both satirise and issue a warning about the nanny state.

Gulliver, played with his customary playfulness by Neil Pearson, insisted he had visited a country called Gelbetia. The country was run by doctors, lifestyle was no longer a choice but a matter of law, and every character flaw was part of a condition. So laziness was excused as "effort deficit syndrome", and impatience became "queue frustration disorder". The series began on an amusing and thought-provoking note.

Brian Gulliver's Travels is a new comedy, written by Bill Dare, produced by Steven Canny and starring Neil Pearson. He plays a maker of travel programmes, in hospital, claiming to have had strange encounters in an unknown continent. He's been away six years. His estranged daughter Rachel (Mariah Gale) visits him, hears his story, the first of (you've guessed it) six adventures. He was flying over the Amazon when his plane crashed, he landed in water (to his surprise, it was warm) and was picked up by a ship.

This ship was crewed by friendly people without any hair, speaking English. He is taken to the ship's doctor, given a welcome pill, a scan. Soon he discovers he is meeting people who live in a Medocracy. Not only do doctors rule, their deity is medical too. In this country, Gelbetia, people are not unfit. They have symptoms which are treated. The captain of the ship suffers from Incompetence Syndrome. Laziness is Effort Deficit Syndrome. Diet is prescribed, exercise is compulsory. Naturally there is a rebel movement. They raid gyms, destroy the running machines, burn leotards, throw the lentil smoothies down the drain, eat chocolate gateau. Brian takes up with them. When they're caught and jailed the worst punishment is six months' hard yoga. At the very end, Rachel is given reason to believe that Brian may not, after all, just be fabricating again. She says she'll be back for next week's adventure, in Harbentha. So will I. A nimbler reflection on achieving a national state of health is hard to imagine.

Following Ed Reardon into this programme slot is a big challenge. But Brian Gulliver (played by Neil Pearson) is another marvellous character. The creation of Bill Dare, Brian is a man who finds himself in hospital, telling his daughter about the strange adventures that have landed him there. He's been to a land, Gelbetia, where no one has "bad" behaviour because everything can be diagnosed as a symptom or syndrome by the ruling medical industry. It's allusive, relevant, full of surprises, satirical in the true spirit of Swift. And very funny.

Writer Nigel Smith conducted exhaustive research for this comedy series about a man in a coma: he was lying in one himself a few years ago. The central character Ben (played by Neil Pearson) is not the most reliable of narrators - his mind wanders from real memories to imagined conversations with his toddler daughter who drinks vodka from a baby's bottle and is voiced as a middle-aged vamp by Leslie Ash. From the ghastly fear of the music one's family might play in the hope of speeding up a return to consciousness to the arrival of Robbie Williams at another patient's bedside - where he is mistaken for Jesus - this is full of restorative laughs.

Vent, on the other hand, looks the terrifying in the eye and makes it funny. A sitcom about Ben, a man who fell into a sudden coma (yes, really), the first episode of this new series had Ben returning home, still pretty disabled, after months of being locked inside his failing body, unable to communicate. We hopped between real life - the ambulance, Ben's house, his life before his accident - and Ben's virtual reality, where his small daughter has grown up enough to hang out and give him advice, and there's a never-ending panel show going on, hosted by Robert Webb.

Strange? Yes. But witty and human too. Though the banter between Neil Pearson as Ben and Fiona Allen as his wife, Mary, occasionally erred on the Seinfeld side of sentimentality - no couple wisecrack all the time - this was convivial, clever drama. How refreshing to listen to a Radio 4 comedy that you feel you must keep up with, rather than one where you can predict every line.

You don't have to have heard previous series of this or the full length play last Friday night. You'll catch on right away that Ben (Neil Pearson) is coming back home after a spell in hospital when he's been unconscious, nearly died, is now making a difficult recovery. But it might help to know that it's still bitingly funny, whether about being a patient or a son, a husband or a father. It's written and directed by Nigel Smith and based on his own grim experiences which, with good luck, he's survived and now, with rare skill, he's transformed into comedy.