Galton and Simpson

One of the more bizarre but resonant sketches on Big Train had George Martin one of the Beirut hostages at a press conference after being freed. Asked about his ordeal, Terry Waite made appropriate noises but Martin responded to every questions with yet another anecdote about working with the Beatles, familiar to fans from any amount of documentaries and biographies. I imagine that Galton and Simpson must occasionally feel trapped in the same way and that they must have a ready supply of polished anecdotes to appease the public. Their sense, after all these years, of what an audience expects to hear may, I suspect, be as much of a limitation as the interviewer's innate curiosity.

For what it's worth, the question I would like to ask them isn't about radio as such, but pertinent in view of the recent Curse of Comedy series on BBC 4. It's simply: what are their views on the various dramatisations of Hancock's life, going back to Heathcote Williams' stage play Hancock's Last Half Hour, and have they ever been tempted to try their own version?

I'd also like to know whether The Bargee (their film starring Harry H Corbett) was one of the ideas Hancock rejected before going on to work with Philip Oakes.

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Radio pilot without the TV cast? That's news to me. Any details?

BBC 7 did, however, broadcast a new version of the first episode with Freddie Jones and John Thomson as the father and son. With the script freed from those familiar voices (and the new actors not disguising their Northern background) it was possible to appreciate afresh how superbly crafted it was: within a few lines you get a sense of their mutual dependency and the fact they're pulling on the same team - Albert even doles out some nuggets of praise for the job Harold has done that day - which of course makes the old man's later selfishness even more powerful and poignant.

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Bit of confusion here: I know Corbett and Brambell redid pilot for radio and there was that more recent version with Jones and Thomson but email to which I was replying seemed to be suggesting there was yet another version pre-Corbett and Brambell.

epguides.com/Steptoe...

dates the radio version of the TV pilot with Corbett etc as 1966 and the Jones/Thomson remake as 1999 but there is no reference to any other actors essaying it. Not that it hugely matters. A great script in any case.

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All clear now. I suppose we just have to be glad it hasn't yet been one of the G & S scripts chosen by Paul Merton (or given

And yes, all the shows in that series were written by G & S - in effect the Beeb saying to them, post Hancock, do whatever you'd like to do and here's the time we'd like you to fill. Can't imagine such trust nowadays. Reading about the freedom accorded Dennis Potter, too, in the 60s and 70s, it truly was a different world.

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... or given to Ant and Dec for their special brand of homage, as in The Likely Lads, I meant to say.

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Having just heard the programme, good to hear G & S stress the positive side of their long association with Hancock and their reluctance to speak of the time after they parted company (or, indeed, the Decca recordings of old TV episodes other than to say "not a happy time").

Also good to hear that the Curse of Comedy Steptoe play did not reflect their experience of the professional relationship of Corbett and Brambell, even if they weren't close offscreen. That screenplay implied that there was no inherent worth in the Steptoe series and that every moment of the actors' being together was hell.

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Re The Radio Ham, there were moments when the sound quality seemed to take a dip, which makes me wonder whether the Pye recording as issued on LP was itself an edited version of the script as performed in the studio or had perhaps been issued in different versions, perhaps including one suitable for broadcast abroad, a la BBC transcription discs. This might explain, for example, a dig at Parisiens which seemed to have come from a poorer audio source.

Going back to the issue of the Curse of Comedy programmes, I don't know how much it has been discussed on this board but I felt the Hancock programme was a pretty pointless project. This is not to deny that he was a man in freefall - ie it may have been closer to the facts than the Steptoe story - but to question the worth of us seeing it. And the one brief imaginative note at the end - of Hancock embracing his comic persona - was too little, too late for me.

I can't recall the William Humble (?) screenplay with Alfred Molina vividly, but my impression is it was more restrained. Heathcote Williams' short play Hancock's Last Half Hour does work, in my opinion, maybe because it doesn't try to be a biopic but it is imaginative and sympathetic.