Hancock's Half Hour Collectibles: Volume 1 Ray Galton

Hancock's Half Hour Collectibles: Volume 1 by Ray Galton

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Summary

A fascinating collection of rare and remastered radio & TV material starring Tony HancockTony Hancocks broadcasting career began in the early 1950s with appearances in BBC radio programmes such as Variety Bandbox and Calling All Forces.

Hancock's Half Hour Collectibles: Volume 1: Rarities from the BBC radio archive by Ray Galton

A fascinating collection of rare and remastered radio & TV material starring Tony Hancock

Tony Hancocks broadcasting career began in the early 1950s with appearances in BBC radio programmes such as Variety Bandbox and Calling All Forces. Rare archive extracts of both are presented in this collection, along with an edition of Educating Archie, the radio comedy in which Hancock was a regular guest star.

Soon he had his own radio series, Hancocks Half Hour, which transferred to BBC television in 1956. This volume features four complete episodes: the recently discovered TV soundtrack of 'The Horror Serial', plus remastered and restored versions of 'The Blackboard Jungle', 'The Student Prince' and 'The Test Match from the radio series.

Also rarely heard since first broadcast are soundtrack interviews with Tony Hancock - including the notorious edition of Face to Face from 1960 - and interviews with writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. A bonus PDF booklet looks at each item in the context of Hancocks broadcasting career, with insights into how many of these lost or rare items were discovered.

Marking the legacy of one our greatest comedy entertainers, this collection is a must for fans of Tony Hancock and Hancock's Half Hour.

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson met in a sanatorium in Surrey, where they were both being treated for TB. Ray Galton remembers noticing the six-foot-four Simpson and thinking he looked surprisingly large - you expect everyone in a sanatorium to be thin and weedy, and he was the biggest guy Id ever seen. During two years in the same ward, they listened to comedy shows together and also wrote a series of their own, creating a radio room in a linen cupboard.

Having left the sanatorium within a few months of each other, they decided to get a professional opinion of their work and sent a sketch they had written called The Pirate Sketch to the BBC. They were asked to go in for an interview, and soon found themselves writing for the sketch show Happy Go Lucky. Over the next two years they continued to write sketches for a number of big names, before coming up with the idea for Hancocks Half Hour. Although the BBC took some persuading, eventually the show was scheduled, initially for radio but later as a television series. A phenomenally successful ten years later, Galton and Simpson were themselves very well known names.

After Hancocks Half Hour they wrote Comedy Playhouse for the BBC, out of which came their second huge television and radio hit, Steptoe & Son. In 1977 they wrote The Galton & Simpson Playhouse, produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV.

Hancock's Half Hour Collectibles: Volume 1 Ray Galton

Hancock's Half Hour Collectibles: Volume 1 by Ray Galton

Summary

Hancock's Half Hour Collectibles: Volume 1 Summary

Hancock's Half Hour Collectibles: Volume 1: Rarities from the BBC radio archive by Ray Galton

About Ray Galton

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