Tony Hancock

Anthony John Hancock (12 May 1924 – 25 June 1968) was an English comedian and actor.

High-profile during the 1950s and early 1960s, Hancock had a major success with his BBC series Hancock's Half Hour, first broadcast on radio from 1954, then on television from 1956, in which he soon formed a strong professional and personal bond with comic actor Sid James. Although his decision to cease working with James, when it became known in early 1960, disappointed many at the time, his last BBC series in 1961 contains some of his best-remembered work (including "The Blood Donor" and "The Radio Ham"). After breaking with his scriptwriters Ray Galton and Alan Simpson later that year, his career declined.

Quotes

• [His eponymous role in Hancock's Half Hour wasn't] a character I put on and off like a coat. It's a part of me and a part of everybody I see.
  • Comments during Face to Face (broadcast 7 February 1960), cited in Ray Galton and Alan Simpson Hancock's Half Hour (London: Woburn Press, 1974), Contents page.

• I wouldn't expect happiness. I don’t. I don’t think it is possible. But I'm very fortunate to be able to work in something that I like... The only happiness I could achieve would be to perfect the talent I have, however small it may be ... and if such a time came when I found that I had come to the end of what I could develop out of my own ability, limited however it may be, then I wouldn’t want to do it anymore.
  • Comments during Face to Face (broadcast 7 February 1960), as cited in John Fisher Tony Hancock: The Definitive Biography (London: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 278.