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Shop nowHancock's Half Hour: Series 5
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Learn moreThe complete fifth series of the legendary BBC Radio comedy series starring Tony Hancock.
Created by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson in 1954, Hancock’s Half Hour was the radio vehicle that made Tony Hancock a household name. Each week listeners would be admitted to the sometimes fantastical, sometimes mundane life of 'the lad ‘imself'. Aided and abetted by Sid James, Bill Kerr Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques, Hancock would enter into the spirit of each episode with characteristic dolefulness.
This volume contains all 20 episodes from the fifth radio series, collected together for the first time. In these hilarious Half Hours, Hancock has a makeover; turns his home into a private school; stands in the East Cheam by-election; presents three short plays from the East Cheam Repertory Company; takes in a wrestling match with Miss Pugh and gets more than he bargains for when he wins a TV quiz show. The episodes are: The New Radio Series; The Scandal Magazine; The Male Suffragettes; The Insurance Policy; The Publicity Photograph;The Unexploded Bomb; Hancock's School; Around the World in Eighty Days; The Americans Hit Town; The Election Candidate; Hancock's Car; The East Cheam Drama Festival; The Foreign Legion; Sunday Afternoon at Home; The Grappling Game; The Junk Man; Hancock's War; The Prize Money; The Threatening Letters and The Sleepless Night.
This new set includes improved audio quality and extended edits for five episodes, plus a previously unreleased 'mini-episode' recorded to coincide with the 1958 Commonwealth Games. Duration: 10 hours approx.
Ray Galton (Author)
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 I’d 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 Hancock’s 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 Hancock’s 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.
Ray Galton (Author)
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 I’d 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 Hancock’s 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 Hancock’s 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.