Hancock is regarded by many as the greatest radio and television comedian
of his day from any country. Born in Birmingham to a hotelier and part-time
entertainer who died when he was still a boy, Hancock had already tried
stand-up comedy at 16 and made his first radio broadcast in 1941. During
wartime service with the RAF, he worked in ENSA concert parties and
gang shows. After early post-war struggles he got a job as a comedian
at the Windmill Theatre. Radio bookings began to come in from 1949,
in 1953, Hancock became the resident comedian on radio's All-Star Bill,
working again with Graham Stark and, for the first time, writers Ray
Galton and Alan Simpson. When the first series of Hancock's Half Hour
began in 1954, featuring a talented cast that included Sid
James, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth
Williams and Bill Kerr. It soon took off, which is more than can
be said for Hancock's first film appearance, as a bandmaster in a deadly
army comedy, Orders
Are Orders.
The character of Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock was rude, arrogant,
stubborn, childish and pompous - and much-loved by millions of listeners.
The show went on until 1959 and ran on television from 1956. Despite
increasing dependence on alcohol, and often having to read his lines
from cue cards, he turned out some wonderful half-hours, including The
Blood Donor, The Bowmans and The Radio Ham. There was another film,
The Rebel also
written by Galton and Simpson, casting Hancock as a London clerk who
becomes an artist in Paris. Galton and Simpson had partially written
several other film ideas when Hancock decided not to work with them
again, in films or TV. Instead, he did The
Punch and Judy Man, a melancholy film comedy that cast him as a
seaside entertainer with a nagging wife. That was really the end, although
there was an abysmal TV series, Hancock's, and three episodes of a comedy
series made in Australia, where he committed suicide with a combination
of alcohol and pills.
