During wartime service with
the RAF, he worked in ENSA concert parties and gang shows. On one of these,
Hancock met Graham Stark with whom
he would later co-star in situation comedy
routines that foreshadowed the advent of
the classic Hancock's Half Hour. After early
post-war struggles he got a job as a comedian
at the Windmill Theatre. Radio bookings
began to come in from 1949. His characterisation of a long-suffering Scoutmaster in
Happy-Go-Lucky (Stark and Bill Kerr, both
to be associated with him, were among the
Scouts) was popular, as was his term as
tutor to the ventriloquist's dummy Archie
Andrews in Educating Archie, when his exasperated 'Flippin' kids' became a nationally
repeated catchphrase.
Two years later, in
1953, Hancock became the resident comedian on radio's All-Star Bill, working again
with Stark and, for the first time, writers
Ray Gallon and Alan Simpson, who would
create his 'character' and furnish him with
all his best material. Egocentric and depressive, Hancock worried to an obsessive
degree about relying too much on fellow
performers. So Stark was missing when the
first series of Hancock's Half Hour began in
1954 featuring a talented cast that included
Sidney James, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth
Williams and Bill Kerr. It soon took
off, more than can be said for Hancock's
first film appearance, as a bandmaster in a
deadly army comedy, Orders Are Orders.
Later Hancock would tell of going to a
cinema to see the film and asking if they had
a seat in the circle. He was told he could
have the first 15 rows.
By great radio comedy
acting, Hancock created a character of
grandiose ambitions and huge cynicism,
rooked by everyone and loved by no-one.
This creation, frequently pictured in
Homburg hat and astrakhan coat, wearing
a predictably gloomy expression, was
described by Galon and Simpson as 'a
cunning, high-powered mug'. The character
of Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock III
was rude, arrogant, stubborn, childish and
pompous — and much-loved by millions of
listeners. The show went on until 1959 and
ran on television from 1956, though Kerr,
Williams and Jacques were phased out. The
TV programmes, many of them two-handers
for James and Hancock, were equally popular and became much-repeated classics.
In
1960, at Hancock's insistence, James was
dropped and, still scripted by Gallon and
Simpson, he went solo. Despite increasing
dependence on alcohol, and often having to
read his lines from cue cards, he turned out
some wonderful half-hours, including The
Blood Donor, The Bowmans and The Radio
Ham. There was another film, The Rebel,
also written by Gallon and Simpson, casting
Hancock as a London clerk who becomes
an artist in Paris, but it was only partly
successful (although today it is regarded as somethng of a cult movie and one of its biggest fans is John Lydon, aka Johny Rotten).
Galton and Simpson had partially written several other film ideas when
Hancock decided not to work with them
again, in films or TV. Instead, he did The
Punch and Judy Man, a melancholy film
comedy which cast him as a seaside entertainer with a nagging wife. It was too downbeat for his public, who stayed away in
droves.
That was really the end, although
there was an abysmal TV series, Hancock's,
and three episodes of a comedy series made
in Australia, where he committed suicide
with a combination of alcohol and pills. Like
many other comedians, he had not known
when the pinnacle of achievement had been
reached.
