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Regarded as the best radio and TV comic of his era, Tony Hancock was a man whose star burned brightly in the eyes and ears of millions before his untimely death in 1968. Now, forty years on, critically acclaimed biographer John Fisher brings the first fully authorised account of his life.
Tony Hancock was one of post-war Britain’s most popular comedians – his radio show ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’ would clear the streets as whole families tuned in to listen.
His peerless timing and subtle changes in intonation marked Hancock out as a comic genius. His character ‘Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock’ was an amplification of his own persona, a pompous prat whose dreams of success are constantly thwarted. The original British loser that we recognise in Victor Meldrew and Alan Partridge. Wonderfully supported by a cast including Sid James, Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams, and working with scripts from Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, Hancock became a huge star. The show was commisioned for TV, showcasing his talent for hilarious facial expression, and he became the first British comedian to earn a thousand pounds a week.
Behind Tony Hancock’s success however hid the self-destructive behaviour that plagued him all his life. Prone to self-doubt, and wanting to be the star of his own show, he got rid of James, and finally dismissed Galton and Simpson who had created the platform for his success.
His private life was wracked by his ever increasing alcoholism and bouts of depression, and his relationships shattered by his capacity for violence. His ratings fell and, feeling washed up and alone after divorcing his second wife, he committed suicide in an Australian hotel room in 1968.
Now, forty years after his death John Fisher explores the turbulent life of a man regarded by his peers as one of the greatest British comics to have ever lived.
- Sales Rank: #5175498 in Books
- Brand: Brand: HarperCollins UK
- Published on: 2009-04-30
- Released on: 2009-06-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.40" w x 5.00" l, 1.45 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 656 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
‘If God is in the details then this book has a very strong case for being considered divine.’ The Word magazine
‘Magisterial’ The Times
‘There is no better example of the tragedy of comedy than Tony Hancock’ Mail on Sunday
‘Lives up to its title, dispelling myths and replacing all previous accounts.’
Independent on Sunday
‘an exceptional book’
Oxford TImes
‘Packed to bursting point with painstaking attention to detail …a rich gift from Fisher to anyone who was ever a fan.
Stage
‘an indispensible book…a brilliant and much-needed account of Hancock’s extensive theatre work and its originality, a celebration of the audacity of the television work, and a kind of voyage round the comedian’s mind and the nature of his comic enterprise.
The Guardian
About the Author
John Fisher has a long and distinguished career as a TV producer working in light entertainment with such giants of comedy as Bob Monkhouse, Spike Milligan, Bruce Forsyth & Tommy Cooper. His most recent work includes Channel 4’s critically acclaimed “Heroes of Comedy”. An authority on popular entertainment, he has written many books on the subject. ‘Jus’ Like That!’, his stage celebration of the life of Tommy Cooper, was a recent West End hit. John is also a member of the Inner Magic Circle.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
More than Half an Hour Here
By malcsharp
Remember the show about nothing? The main character was a comedian, there was a couple of "unusual" male friends, one of whom was "on the make" and a female friend. Thinking Seinfeld? Well no. Think Hancock's Half Hour, originally a hugely successful radio series and then an equally successful TV series back in the 1950's.
Galton and Simpson provided the scripts and Tony Hancock delivered them to perfection. This is an excellent biography of the comedian who yearned to be taken seriously. Fortunately some of his most magnificent work is available on CD and DVD and John Fisher does a very good job highlighting the successes as well as dealing with the complexities of a man that wanted to be so much more.
Unlike Hancock's great hero Sid Field we have a lasting memory of the man in this work.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Hancock and the human condition - both funny and sad
By MR PHILIP J SHANNON
Tony Hancock, at his peak in the 1950s, made one third of the British population laugh. He did it, not by telling jokes or delivering the smutty double-entendre, but by finding humour in the clash between the common person's dreams for a better life and the serial disappointment of those dreams. John Fisher's biography of Hancock analyses the man, his artistic persona, and the essence of his comedy that had made Hancock Britain's most-loved comic.
Born in 1924 to a semi-professional music hall family, Hancock got hooked early on the thrill of making people laugh. He served his apprenticeship in provincial variety clubs and radio where his aptitude for the comedy of character brought him to the attention of the BBC and two of the best comedy scriptwriters in the business, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who combined to produce his greatest achievement, Hancock's Half Hour, on radio and TV from 1954 to 1961.
Hancock's skill with interpretation, timing, delivery, vocal inflection, body gesture and facial expression captured every nuance of Galton and Simpson's scripts, and, with one of those chemically perfect support casts (Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Bill Kerr and Kenneth Williams), turned their fictional home at 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, into everyone's site for the mugging of aspirations by reality.
East Cheam was a shabby south London suburb, struggling with poverty and rationing after the war, and a rebuttal to the Tory Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan's, catch-cry of `You never had it so good'. Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock (Hancock's radio and screen persona) aspired to the good life but was doomed by his lowly class. The added pomposity and pretensions of his character made for a doubly humorous fall without ever losing his identification with all those who knew through bleak experience that life is not as it should be.
Hancock could make humour literally out of nothing (such as the boring Sunday afternoon), extracting comedy out of the "dreary minutiae of humdrum existence". Hancock, and Galton and Simpson, were admirers of the American humourists, James Thurber and Robert Benchley, who were masters of this brand of humour. Walter Mitty, the fictional subject of a famous Thurber short story, also inspired the daydreams of heroism, excitement and adventure in the fantasies of Hancock, yearning for something better than grimy suburbia or a lonely Earls Court bed-sit.
It is not a cliché to say that Hancock suffered for his art. He sought perfection and was plagued by self-doubt, not helped by a life-long struggle with learning his lines. Every night on TV (or stage) was like a first night and he would usually be physically sick.
This core anxiety soon intensified, as, seeking new directions and international film recognition, Hancock moved on from Galton and Simpson and the BBC. This began, however, a seven year slide in his career, feeding his self-doubt and insecurity as his ratings plummeted, overtaken by, amongst others, Galton and Simpson's new vehicle, Steptoe and Son.
Alcohol was Hancock's recourse but this only served to destroy his technical comedic gifts. In his private life, he became violent towards his women partners, and suffered psychotic episodes and mood swings. Clinical depression, vodka and barbiturates provided the lethal combination for Hancock's suicide in Sydney in June 1968, aged just 44 - "things seem to go too wrong too many times", said his suicide note. It is ironic that Hancock, whose character made life bearable for so many others, was unable to save himself in the end.
The rise and fall of Hancock is exhaustively told by Fisher but he is rather less voluble on one of the main reasons for Hancock's achievements, for Hancock described himself as a socialist (this gets one sentence in a 627 page biography) as Galton and Simpson also called themselves socialists (this is only hinted at by Fisher in describing Galton as a "pen-pusher" at the Transport and General Workers Union).
The socialist politics of Hancock, Galton and Simpson gave them a genuine sympathy for the lives of the Hancock public with their disappointments and antagonism to those who stood in the way of fulfilment. Hancock was also a fervent atheist and strong sceptic of war (he had lost his elder brother in World War 11), and his disillusion with the self-feeding hypocrisies of war and religion helped to make the rationalist and pacifist, Bertrand Russell, his most admired philosopher.
Hancock identified, and personified, the "two basic ingredients of good comedy" - it should be "both funny and sad". Hancock knew that to laugh at the human condition you had first to be able to cry at it if the point, as the socialist Hancock also knew, was to change it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A little wordy, but lots of information
By Andruma Mor
Like it overall...a bit wordy at times, and it assumes a knowledge of pre-1970 british show business. However, lots of information and substance.
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