Very Nearly An Armful - The Galton & Simpson Story

Radio 2 is saluting the best of British talent in their approach to the forthcoming London Olympics. Tonight's fanfare is for the great comedy writing duo of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, from Hancock's Half Hour to Steptoe and Son, their work on radio and TV broke away from the accepted broadcast comedy conventions (sketches, jokes, musical interludes) by developing characters and situations. Here's how they met, who they influenced, with tributes galore not least from presenter Stephen Merchant.

In Radio 2's Very Nearly an Armful - a quote from The Blood Donor, as any self-respecting baby boomer will know - the comedy writer Stephen Merchant analysed their lasting appeal, with the help of Denis Norden, Ben Elton, Beryl Vertue and David Mitchell.

It was to Norden and his writing partner Frank Muir that the two working-class lads, thrown together in a TB sanitorium in their late teens, sent their first efforts at comedy scriptwriting. Norden recognised their raw talent instantly and later put them "in a class of their own". They broke more new ground than any of their contemporaries, he said.

Apart from anything else, Galton and Simpson pioneered what Norden called "the jokeless radio comedy", by which he meant a series (Hancock) which relied on situation and character, rather than an endless stream of gags. It was the beginning of the sitcom.

Its apogee was Steptoe and Son, each half-hour episode a perfect little mini-drama of aspiration, conflict and disappointment, distinguished as much by the fine playing of Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H Corbett as it was by the masterly writing of Galton and Simpson.