Ray Galton

Battle of the first sitcom

On the 2nd November 1954 on the BBC Home Service Tony Hancock made his debut in a radio show called Hancock's Half Hour, written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson it became a huge hit with audiences and is widely regarded as Britain's first sitcom. Six years earlier tom other well known writers Frank Muir and Denis Nordan had written a radio comedy series Take It From Here.

Tony Hancock is still influencing comedy 60 years later

On the 2 November 1954, a 30-year-old comedian named Tony Hancock embarked on his first starring vehicle for BBC radio, Hancock's Half Hour, scripted by two writers aged only in their twenties, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.

An idea pioneered by the BBC, lately adopted by Sky, and now back again on the BBC, Comedy Playhouse was an exciting notion: a kind of "try before you buy" test on potential new comedy series. Originally created as a way for Tony Hancock's writers Alan Galton and Ray Simpson to spread their wings beyond East Cheam, the series spawned Last Of The Summer Wine and more Galton & Simpson gold in Steptoe And Son. This doc features the pair as talking heads alongside stalwarts such as June Whitfield.

Tony Hancock had no children, but for decades his descendants have been all around us. Basil Fawlty, Rigsby from Rising Damp, Brian Potter from Phoenix Nights, Mark Corrigan from Peep Show, Alan Partridge - all inherited his genes, or at any rate his character's genes (it isn't easy to be sure of the difference, given that by far his most successful role was as a miserable actor-comedian called Tony Hancock).

It would be absurd to suggest the listed characters are identical - every one of them is a brilliant creation in his own right - but all are irritable, stuffy, pompous, emotionally constipated and prematurely middle-aged; they tut and sneer and grumble and moan, each convinced that Fate has singled him out for mistreatment he doesn't deserve.

All are in some way thwarted, yearning impotently for stardom (Partridge), status (Fawlty, Potter), a beautiful woman (Rigsby, Corrigan). And each, most importantly, exudes an air of pathos. No matter how wretchedly they behave, the viewer can't hate them. They remain somehow heroes, awful heroes, and against our better judgement we're on their side. Just as we were with their father, Hancock.

On Tuesday the great progenitor was the subject of BBC One's occasional series My Hero. Ben Miller, of Armstrong & Miller, was the man paying tribute, rummaging through his life and shaking his head in admiration at old scripts of Hancock's Half Hour. These scripts were written not by Hancock but by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, whom Miller interviewed.

Given Hancock enjoyed vast success while Galton & Simpson were writing for him, and next to none after he'd got rid of them, it might be tempting to wonder whether My Hero should have been about them instead. But if Hancock's Half Hour was the biggest thing on radio and TV, it wasn't just because of the dialogue. Hancock himself - and again I'm not sure whether I mean the character, the man or both - stood for something. He stood for England, the England of the 1950s. Weary, glamourless, frustrated, frayed, but battling grumpily on - that was England, and that was Hancock. Hancock's success came to an end not long after the Fifties had. He killed himself in 1968.

Radio Times review

Ben Miller perfectly describes his dolorous comedy hero, the incomparable Tony Hancock, as "carrying a sheep-like despondency and a cuddly intellectual misery". Miller first fell under Hancock's spell as a child, when his dad told him he had to watch The Blood Donor, arguably Hancock's finest half-hour. "I'd never seen anything so funny in my life."

In this sweet tribute Miller potters through Hancock's life, visiting the hotel in Bournemouth where he was brought up and chatting to his biographers. Best of all, he visits Hancock's writers, the brilliant Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who had a sometimes fractious relationship with a difficult man. And Miller has some fun with papers from the BBC archives that describe the volatile Hancock as "a moody perfectionist with a great interest in money and no sense of loyalty to the Corporation". Ouch.

Using comedians to sing the praises of the performers who have inspired them has offered an interesting perspective to the usual documentary format and this occasional series ends tonight with a new tribute to Tony Hancock.

"His attitude to life infuses all of British comedy," says Ben Miller, which explains why the clips from Hancock's Half Hour, and Hancock which followed it, still have a timeless appeal.

To find out where that iconic character came from - the pompous, despondent failure - Ben meets Hancock's writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.

And he revisits the various stages of his career: from the six shows a day in the London revue club where his act was just an interruption to the naked ladies, to his stab at serious drama in The Punch And Judy Man - by which time his drinking had gone beyond a joke.

theartsdesk Q&A: Writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson

Fifty years on, the creators of Steptoe and Son explain its enduring appeal as the classic sitcom is revived onstage.

Q&A: Writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson

Fifty years on, the creators of Steptoe and Son explain its enduring appeal as the classic sitcom is revived onstage.

Fifty years on from their first appearance, Albert and 'Arold still form the perfect sitcom duo: bitter, failed and trapped. Paul Jackson looks at the Steptoes' vast comedic influence, in conversation with their creators Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, as well as present-day writers of both comedy and drama.

Paul Jackson, great practical grammarian of British television, on how Alan Simpson and Ray Galton's comedy characters, born on a BBC pilot programme in 1962, ruled the airwaves for 13 years after (with native versions in America, Sweden and Holland) and have influenced other British writers over several generations. Simpson and Galton join him, as do Maurice Gran and Laurence Marks of Birds of a Feather, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor of Red Dwarf, as well as Peter Flannery of Our Friends in the North.