I’m not really sure when I first learnt of the name Tony Hancock? Being a keen student of all things from the 1950s /60s it was a name that was constantly popping up in books and magazine articles I was reading to feed my hunger for knowledge of that period.

I remember my dad telling me about him and putting him in the same bracket as The Goons, and I knew how much he loved Spike, Harry, Bentine and Sellers. High praise that I thought.

The old man was also a keen collector of comedy records and it was among them in the early 1990s that I later found what all the fuss was about.

That familiar tuba opening to the theme tune of his radio show ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’ was then soon after regularly heard in my bedroom as were the names of the regular supporting cast of Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Bill Kerr and Kenneth Williams, as I began to soak up the work.

It didn’t take me long to begin to appreciate the wonderful scripts of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, which regularly led to 30 minutes of spoken magic. The radio shows began in 1954, with Hancock then aged 30 and were so popular that by 1956, that they were also broadcast on television and achieving viewing figures of 20 million.

In the shows Hancock was living at number 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam under the name of Anthony Aloysius St. John Hancock. They portrayed a man with high-end aspirations, but who in truth was struggling to become a success in whatever his chosen field. His day to day life was depicted as he went from one situation to another, trying to relieve the boredom of his very existence –

‘Hypochondria is the only illness I don’t have.’

Both formats of the show were hugely popular and they turned Hancock into a household name. Episodes from over the different series such as  ‘Sunday Afternoon at Home’ – ‘Soon be Monday…’ ‘The Blood Donor’ – ‘A pint? Have you gone raving mad?’ – ‘The Radio Ham’ –

‘This radio lark’s a wonderful hobby, y’know. I’ve got friends all over the world, all over the world . . . none in this country, but friends all over the world – and ‘Twelve Angry Men – ‘Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain? Brave Hungarian peasant girl who forced King John to sign the pledge at Runnymede and close the boozers at half past ten! Is all this to be forgotten?’ – have gone down in comedy history.

The show eventually became a ‘two -hander’ with Sid James as the foil to Hancock, but he was uncomfortable with this being seen as a double act and he ended the partnership.  The ‘Lad Himself’ was in private a very highly-strung person, often described as hard to get along with. The classic case of comedian off stage struggling to match his ‘funny’ on-stage persona.

Hancock was then a guest in the classic interview programme ‘Face To Face’ and soon exposed under questioning from John Freeman to be someone full of self doubt and highly critical of himself. He looked uncomfortable from beginning to end and it is said, the effects of this show unsettled him enormously.

He starred in the 1960 film ‘The Rebel’ as a 9-5 city worker –

‘Give me a frothy coffee without the froth.’ – who ‘jacks it all in’ to become a (struggling) artist in Paris. I particularly like the work between Hancock and the actress Irene Handl, playing Mrs. Cravatte his landlady. ‘Look at that horrible thing. What is it?’  ‘A self portrait madam’ ‘Who of? Marvellous stuff.

Having already ended his working relationship with Sid James, he then distanced himself from his writing team of Galton and Simpson in 1961, in the attempt to avoid becoming, in his view, a cliché and ‘avoid repetition’

His 1962 film ‘The Punch and Judy Man’ was developed from an earlier idea by his previous writers and finds Hancock playing a struggling seaside entertainer.  Sadly it wasn’t well received at the time, though has been more fondly thought of in recent years

Also in 1962, he had moved from the BBC to the independent TV channel ATV, but struggled to forge a lasting writing partnership with anyone, so the work produced was patchy at best.

In his personal life, he was also on the gradual road to alcoholism. He had warnings that if he continued drinking it would kill him within months. Here was a man in steep decline then. 

He tried to resurrect his career in Australia with a 13 part series ‘Hancock Down Under’, but the few episodes that he managed to record, were not shown for years.

On 25th June 1968, Tony Hancock committed suicide in his flat in Sydney aged just 44.

A note he left simply stated ‘things just seemed to go wrong too many times’. 

Spike Milligan later said ‘he ended up on his own. I thought, he’s got rid of everybody else, he’s going to get rid of himself and he did.”

Tony Hancock ‘Stone Me, what a life!’

The Mumper of SE5