Ray Galton

Forget class, it's the laughs that count in comedy

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, the creators of Steptoe And Son, say that Danny Cohen, the new controller of BBC1, is wrong to be on the look-out for new comedy shows featuring working-class characters.

Ray Galton: 'I punched a writer in the face'

Veteran comedy writer Ray Galton has revealed that he punched a writer in the face for suggesting that he took pleasure in Tony Hancock's decline.

Steptoe to go Dutch

Classic sitcom Steptoe and Son is finally to return to the small screen - but this time in the more unlikely setting of Holland.

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson have been writing together for 60 years and given us classic comedies. If they never write another word we are all in their debt. Radio 2 had a good idea to celebrate their partnership by recreating some of their old scripts for today's new comedy stars. The last in the series was Paul Merton in the role Tony Hancock made famous, The Blood Donor.

Actually, it was written for Arthur Lowe so, in theory, it should have passed easily into another voice. Unfortunately, it didn't. Merton sounded as if he were reading. So did June Whitfield's daughter, Suzy Aitchison, playing the nurse, the role her mother took so memorably 48 years ago. Why? It wasn't the script or the players. It's the art of good comedy production that's gone missing. The technical process has grown easier. The making of words into magic remains a tricky art.

This short comedy season, celebrating the 60-year writing partnership of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson by putting on a quartet of old scripts with new performers, ends on a bold note. Paul Merton recreates The Blood Donor, written for and performed by Tony Hancock in 1961, the classic where our self-important hero answers the call and gets a few surprises. It's bold of Merton to attempt this as, try as he may to present himself as a curmudgeon, everyone thinks he's a nice guy because, unlike Hancock, we feel we know his personality through panel games.

Galton and Simpson look back in laughter

Sitcom giants Galton and Simpson - who met 60 years ago this month - tell The Telegraph that there is not enough rubbish on TV.

When you pull together a triumvirate as powerful as this (two of Britain's funniest writers and its funniest performer), you can't go far wrong because, like sex, even when it's bad it's still pretty damn good. Galton and Simpson are masters of comic writing (secreting some genuinely touching and truthful moments in among the gags, something that's sadly all too rare in contemporary sitcom), and they must be enjoying the new lease of life that Carlton has given their vintage work.

But the Great Christmas Discovery came listening to the usual Golden-Oldie Comedy repeats - this time, two editions of the Hancock Half-Hour. They survive better, I suspect, than many others, though the audience laughter is irritatingly intrusive. But Hancock's persona is a genuine comic invention, and, listening again, I realised something else: Hancock is Basil Fawlty's Dad.

Spooner's Patch is not great comedy but to be funny on a Monday in midsummer - that is a little miracle.

'The Tea Ladies' was much-trumpeted as the fruit of a wonderful new comedy partnership: Ray Galton and Johnny Speight. I've always thought it a measure of the low standards of TV comedy that shows like 'Steptoe' and 'Till Death Us Do Part' were treated with such awe. Clearly several notches above the usual ghastly run of things, they were both formula shows, lapsed quickly into cynical self-parody, and for every one new joke would happily trundle out five old ones. All the same, those several notches meant they were at least watchable and it was a disappointment to find 'The Tea Ladies' showing so few signs of even being that.