Early Life and Career

He was innate inside Birmingham, England, but raised around Bournemouth where his mother and step-father ran A little hotel so called A Durlston Court, however okay, known as The Quality Hotel. He was educated at the boarding school in Swanage and Bradfield College, Berkshire. He left school aged Xv. Around 1942 he joined the RAF Regiment and as the result a failing audition for ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) ended higher by having A Ralph Reader Gang Indicate. Below a war he received regular radio act inside shows like ''Workers' Playday & Kind Bandbox. Inside 1951 he gained the a portion within Educating Archie'', in which he played the coach & foil to the very star, a ventriloquist's dummy. On text he developed the catch phrase — "flippin' kids" — that was to earn him rattling recognition. Inside 1954 he was given his own BBC radio show: ''Hancock's Half Hour''.

Hancock's Peak Years
Working sustaining scripts from either Ray Galton and Alan Simpson the show lasted for 5 years & above the hundred episodes, featuring Sid James, Bill Kerr, Kenneth Williams and over a years Moira Lister and Hattie Jacques. In a radio series the James character would typically exist as dishonorable & exploit Hancock's apparent credulousness, like than exist as a friend of the television series.

Hancock was an tremendous radio star. Such as couple of others he was suspire to clear a streets when families gathered together to listen to the thirstily anticipated episodes. His character changed slightly above a series however potentially in a earliest episodes "the lad himself" was evident. Late episodes were repute classics, potentially in their instance. "A Sunday Afternoon At Home" & "Wild Man of the Woods" were top rating shows & were later on freed as an LP.

"A Sunday Afternoon At Home" is non exclusively among the super right of the Hancock ensemble pieces however these are likewise a close hone evocation of victims 1950s afternoons.

Hancock's lives were depending actually & in observation. From either a "Look Back in Hunger" playlet in a East Cheam Drama Festival Galton & Simpson showed it were new using the British theatre. Were it mimicking or even precursing Pinter by using a sighs & silent pauses one episodes? A pace of the episodes must keep around been innovative in the times of convenient talking Ted Ray, frantic Life using Lyons, et al. once each 2nd of airtime experienced to become filled & "dead air" a central sin.

Using Galton & Simpson cranking out scripts at a rate it be intimate is little question that continuity was non given top priority. Life within Railway Cuttings (incidentally it was Railway Cuttings that was mythologic, non East Cheam itself, these are next to Carshalton) seems to alter up to a home itself. Nin just is Hancock either unemployed or even the battle of poitiers actor/comedian (on this text he occurs as popular radio star on the par by having Ted Ray) but a dimensions of a actual home seem to vary to accommodate the cast. Withwithin later on episodes Railway Cuttings appears to exist as the both-bedroomed terrace, on this text it seems to use at times at least ternary chamber & Miss Pugh passes in. Inside more episodes she "comes round" presumptively from either her have domicile.

Auditor even at a instance either did does'nt notice or did non care. To become fair a transitory & nin-commercial nature & severity of a radio inside those days intended that recordings were non available and the audience got to trust only on their memory of world health organization lived where or even did what in which episode. There were nin many repetition & reruns on more trend lines, cassette tapes were unknown & records issued irregularly. For sure a household situation may single become described when unknown. Hancock got a none/comedian job situation, Sid i think about was on the violin someways. Bill is virtually unemployable, his relationship to the others & origins unexplained. Miss Pugh is Hancock's secretary, (world health organization apparently has such the free job description that she cooks Sunday tiffin) although how else she had paid or even what she did for the unemployed Hancock is a second of life's mysteries.

Although numbers of of a situations described come alien to u.s. in todays world (Late starting TV & Cinemas showing old films, shop shut, taphouse closing early) the mortal reaction to unfavorable situations remains constant.

Hancock's televisiin career when star began inside 1956, ab initio on ITV, however it was a BBC-TV version of ''Hancock's Half Hour (afterwards Hancock) that established him in the medium.

A classic Hancock characterisation referred to himself when "Anthony Aloysius St'' John Hancock" — existence the larger-than-heroic version of Hancock's very self. In a TV series a regular cast was reduced to Hancock & James, permitting a humour to came from either the interaction of the deuce men. James was a realist of the 2, however as well by owning an understated personality world health organization would puncture Hancock's pretensions. Hancock was to be anxious that his operate by owning James was turning a children inside to the double work, & the previous BBC series around 1961 was forswearing James. Despite a contemporary criticism of Hancock, several assume this to contain a right of Hancock's BBC function.

Both of the episodes of Hancock's survive BBC television series come probably his right-remembered operate. The Blood Donor, in which he attend the clinic to give blood. This contains noted lines like, "A pint? Why, that's very nearly an armful!" (A doctor's response: "You won't have an empty arm... or an empty anything!") A second easily-known episode is The Radio Ham, where Hancock plays the ham radio enthusiast who receives the mayday call for from either either the ship inside distress, however his incompetence prevents him from ingesting its position. Each one episodes were in the future re-recorded for the commercial 1961 LP in the style of radio episodes, & these versions use been day and night available ever since. A original TV versions keep around since been freed when section of VHS and DVD compilations, and a soundtracks keep close at hand besides (a bit decoct) been freed in Video.

Shortly prior to recording a original version of "The Blood Donor" Hancock was exposed within the minor car accident. He was non badly injured, however his confidence was shaken & he was unable to view his lines, by owning a effect that a recording was mass produced by having Hancock applying teleprompters (TV monitors displaying a relevant sections of script) and so that he may scroll through a lines instead. Viewers of the programme could notice that he is non seeking in which, logically, he ought to become. Hancock come to rely in teleprompters instead of learning scripts anytime he experienced career difficulties.

Hancock was a stimulator of ii crucial milestones around comedy. A number one was that he was a foremost TV creative person of any genre to exist as paid thomas more so £1000 for one half-30 minutes program. 2nd was a way that comedy was mass produced.

Higher until Hancock’s TV series, each comedy indicate was performed survive. In the Jimmy Edwards series 'Whacko', in which he played a Master of a Public School, the scenes were intercut by having shots of the school clock. This was because a studio just got of these placed of cameras, & a insert shot of a clock gave the babies x seconds to move the cameras into position on the next scene. Temperamentally, Hancock's extremely strung personality mass produced this airy, sustaining a symptom that a programmes come to become pre-recorded, at first when telerecordings and later recorded in 2" video tape. The cost of this horrified the executives at the BBC, but they agreed to give it a try. All of a sudden, making a sitcom became more like making a film. The difference this made to the flow and continuity was immediately apparent, as well as the ability to do location shots. With a few years it had become standard practice to work in this way.

International Dreams and Introspection
Hancock also starred in the 1960 film The Rebel (a.k.a., Call Me Genius in the USA) where he plays the role of an office worker turned artist who meets international acclaim after moving to Paris, but only as the result of mistaken identity. The film was not well received in the United States; owing to a conflict with a contemporary series the film had to be renamed and this inflamed American critics. Hancock was later to dismiss the film as crude and its failure was a contributory factor in his disastrous break with his writers, Galton and Simpson, after the last television series for the BBC. This was famously the worst decision of his career.

Hancock always dreamed of being a major international star, but tradition holds that he failed to realise how uniquely British his style of humour was — too uniquely British, that is, to have universal appeal. This was demonstrated by his second starring vehicle, The Punch and Judy Man (1962), in which he plays a struggling seaside entertainer who dreams of a better life. Sylvia Syms plays his nagging social climber of a wife, and John Le Mesurier plays a sand sculptor. The film's humour is bittersweet and understated and was perfectly tailored to a particular British audience of the time. The vast American entertainment industry, whose moguls were used to a more brash style of humour, dismissed it as slow-moving and dull. His BBC shows were, however, frequently broadcast in Australia and Canada.

In early 1960 Hancock appeared on the BBC's Face to Face, a half-hour in-depth interview programme conducted by former Labour MP John Freeman. Freeman asked Hancock many searching questions about his life and work. Hancock, who deeply admired his interviewer, often appeared uncomfortable with the questions — but answered them frankly and honestly. Hancock had always been highly self-critical, and it is often argued that this interview heightened this tendency, contributing to his later depression.

Hancock’s self-doubt led to self destructiveness — he slowly sacked all those who rose to stardom with him -Bill Kerr, then Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques, and finally his script writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. His reasoning was that to be truly international he had to ditch the catchphrases and become realistic. His classic example, once you had launched him on this subject, was Kenneth Williams. He argued that whenever an ad-hoc character was needed, such as a policeman, it would be played by someone like Kenneth, who would come on with his well known oily' Good Evening' catchphrase. Hancock said the comedy suffered because people did not believe in the policeman, they know it was just Kenneth doing a funny voice.

So he slowly got rid of all his friends. His final BBC TV series, was performed with ordinary actors playing the comedy parts, and by doing so, he created a new way of doing comedy. After the last BBC series he sacked Galton and Simpson. As compensation, the BBC gave them a series of one off comedy shows called 'Comedy Playhouse', of which one was called 'The Offer', becoming forerunner to the classic comedy Steptoe and Son, played (as Hancock would have approved) by two straight actors, Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett.

To write 'The Punch and Judy Man', Hancock hired an up and coming writer called Philip Oakes, who moved in with Hancock to write. The depth to which the character of Anthony Hancock had merged with the person is clear in the film. The scene at the start of the where Tony and his wife eat breakfast in total silence is a direct observation of Tony in real life. When Hancock first read the scene, he looked at Phillip Oakes, and his only comment was 'you bastard...' Hancock knew that the film was going to be about him, in reality, and in fact the whole film is about Hancock’s memories of being a child in Bournemouth.

Hancock read huge amounts, desperately trying to find out the 'why we are here' of life. He read large numbers of philosophers, classic novels and political books, barely understanding half that he read. He would sink into alcoholic depressions, decrying it all as pointless. Its possible that in his last alcoholic depth, he finally saw himself in a cosmic perspective, and it was too much for him. In his suicide note he wrote 'things just went wrong too many times'.

Later Years
He moved to ATV in 1963 with different writers. Godfrey Harrison was the main writer of these series and had found success first on radio then television with A Life Of Bliss (starring George Cole) but had also scripted Hancock's first ever regular television appearances on Fools Rush In (a segment of Kaleidoscope). Harrison had trouble meeting deadlines, so other writers assisted including Terry Nation. [1]

Coincidentally, the series clashed in the television schedule with Steptoe and Son written by Hancock's former writers, Galton and Simpson. Comparisons were not flattering.

Hancock continued to make regular appearances on British television until 1967, but by now alcoholism had dissipated much of his talent. Hancock went to Australia in March 1968 and he committed suicide in Sydney in June.

There is a statue in his honour in Birmingham and a plaque on the wall of the hotel in Bournemouth where he spent some of his early life..

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, Hancock was voted amongst the top 20 greatest comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

Personal Life
In 1950, Hancock married model Cicely Romanis, after a brief courtship. It was a turbulent relationship; Cicely was beaten by her husband, but her knowledge of martial arts meant that Hancock came off worst. Alcohol was the ultimate source of the conflict, as his wife developed her own dependency, and Hancock could not handle a woman being drunk.

The situation became more complicated as Freddie Ross (who worked as his publicist from 1954) became more involved in his life, eventually becoming his mistress. This relationship was also to be scarred by Hancock's capacity for violence. He was divorced by his first wife in 1965, and married Freddie in December of that year. This second marriage was to be short-lived. During these years Hancock was also involved with Joan Le Mesurier, the new wife of actor John Le Mesurier, Hancock's best friend and a regular supporting character actor from his television series. Joan was later to describe the relationship in her book "Lady Don't Fall Backwards", including the fact that her husband readily forgave the affair — if it had been anyone else, he said, he wouldn't have understood it; but with Tony Hancock, it made sense [2]. This is a powerful reminder of the huge personal appeal of a man whose life story alone often reads as particularly cold and cynical. In July 1966 Freddie took one overdose too many; she had been trying to shock Hancock in to reforming himself. Arriving in Blackpool to record an edition of his variety series, Hancock was met by pressmen asking about his wife's attempted suicide. His wife, he felt had tried to destroy his career. The final dissolution of the marriage took place a few days ahead of Hancock's suicide.

Hancock's first wife died as a result of her own problems with alcohol in 1969, the year after her former husband. Freddie Hancock has been based in New York City for many years. She is a prominent member of the New York chapter of BAFTA - The British Academy Of Film & Television Arts.

Recordings
In the last few years, the BBC has issued CDs of the surviving 74 radio episodes in six box sets, one per series, with the sixth box containing several out-of series specials. This was followed by the release of one large boxed set containing all the others in a special presentation case — while it includes no extra material, the larger box alone (without any CDs) still fetches high prices on online marketplaces like eBay, where Hancock memorabilia remains a thriving industry. There have also been video releases of the BBC TV series, but only two Region 2 DVDs to date, the first "Hancock: A Right of Hancock" featuring five episodes from the last TV series, the second "Hancock's Half Hour: Volume 1" containing the surviving episodes of the second and third TV series (none of the first series are known to exist), plus a Christmas special. Presumably if the latter is successful further volumes of remaining episodes will be released.

Episodes of the radio series may be heard on the digital radio station BBC 7 each Tuesday, for instance on-line at 19:00 London time (=GMT during the winter months) at [http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7 the official BBC7 site].

Additional Film Appearances
Orders are Orders (1954) The Rebel/Call Me Genius (1961) The Punch and Judy Man (1962) Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965) The Wrong Box (1966)

Biographies
''Tony Hancock: 'Artiste', A Tony Hancock Companion — (1978) by Roger Wilmut When the Wind Changed: The Life and Death of Tony Hancock — (Arrow, 2000) by Cliff Goodwin Hancock'', — (1996) by Freddie Hancock, BBC Consumer Publishing, ISBN 0563387610