Anthony Aloysius St.John Hancock, of 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, 'Tone' to his friends, was a major figure in British comedy during the fifties and sixties. He was a comic master who kept radio and television audiences in fits of laughter.

Although he appeared in a few films, (he starred in "The Rebel" from 1960, had a very funny cameo appearance in "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines." and played the part of a lugubrious police detective in "The Wrong Box" which starred Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.) he was at his absolute best on BBC radio and later on BBC Television with scripts by Galton and Simpson. The half hour television shows were broadcast for several years under different series titles, starting in 1956 on the BBC as "Hancock's Half Hour" and changing to "Hancock" in 1961. The later shows moved away from 23 Railway Cuttings and were without Sid James.

The shows moved to commercial television (ATV) in 1963 with different scriptwriters, and continued up to 1967. (Galton and Simpson went on to write for the Steptoe and Son series.) The later programmes dropped the 'sitcom' format and switched to variety shows with sketches.

Many comedy stars appeared with Tony on these half-hour shows, most notably Sid James, but also Kenneth Williams, June Whitfield and Hattie Jacques, (these all appeared in the Carry-On films of course) as well as Patrick Cargill, Bill Kerr, Liz Fraser and Frank Thornton.

Tony Hancock went to Australia in March 1968 to work on a television comedy series, but he died in Sydney in June and the world lost a great comedic actor.

May 12th 1999 would have been Tony Hancock's 75th birthday.

BBC Worldwide celebrated this occasion with a video release containing four episodes from the show, as well as some audio tapes.

Read the BBC press releases here.

A reliable source tells me that the Hancock estate will not allow any more episodes to go to video due to poor picture quality, so don't expect any more new releases.

(176kb) BBC Television presents . . . .
(19kb) Yeah, it's marvellous innit ?
All sound files are in Windows .wav format.

Some of the television shows have been released on video, and I have listed them separately with cast information, original broadcast dates and a brief story line, together with a collection of sound clips.

In addition to the videotapes there are also recordings of some of the BBC radio shows on audio cassettes and on LP. There are links below to the BBC audiocassettes and the BBC video tapes.

"The Blood Donor" and "The Radio Ham", two of the most popular of the TV series were re-recorded before an invited audience in October 1961, several months after the original broadcast. They were released on a Marble Arch LP (MAL 872), and also on a Pickwick album titled "The Best of Tony Hancock" (HMA 228)

All the scripts on these tapes were by Alan Simpson and Ray Galton, who wrote about 200 radio show scripts and seventy TV scripts for Tony Hancock up to 1961.

The video tapes are part of the BBC's Classic Comedy Series, other tapes in the series include Steptoe and Son, and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.