Trivia / Hancock's Half Hour

• Acting for Two:
  • Kenneth Williams frequently played multiple characters in episodes he appeared in. He'd also announce episodes on occasion.
  • Most of the supporting cast would occasionally play additional parts that would have been too small to justify hiring additional actors.
• The Cast Showoff: Tony Hancock was often given a chance to show off material from his stage acts, including his impressions of Charles Laughton and Robert Newton.
• Corpsing: Happened from time to time and left in since either the shows were live or (later) done without retakes. Most noticeable when Kenneth Williams or Bill Kerr broke, but occasionally all the cast would be in tears - particularly in the episode "Wild Man Of The Woods":
  Bill: Hey, Sid, look - what's that there up in the trees?
  Sid: Ah nothing, probably a squirrel or something.
  Bill: No, it's not a sirrel, Squ... [everyone starts laughing]
  Tony: If Mister Kerr will say 'It's not a sirrel, Squid' again... [everyone takes a moment to regain their composure]
  Bill: It's not a squirrel, Sid!
• Creator Backlash: Tony Hancock grew to dislike the characters Kenneth Williams played because he felt that audiences were simply laughing at the funny voices Williams used rather than the script itself. Williams could take a hint, he never worked with Hancock again after getting snubbed during the TV series.
• Creator Breakdown:
  • Just before recording of series 2 of the radio version was supposed to commence, Tony Hancock abruptly flew to Rome having been worn down by management arguments that arose over his need to honour his radio commitment as well as his stage commitment to Talk of the Town. Harry Secombe of The Goon Show was asked to step in at the last minute and covered for Hancock for three full episodes and made an appearance in a fourth.
  • Hancock was demanding, obsessed with finding realism within his comedy, and concerned with maintaining his status as a solo performer. By the final series, he'd pushed away the scriptwriters and cast members who'd been his friends and allies in the industry and the show became solely about him.
• The Danza: Other than Kenneth Williams' and Hattie Jacques' characters, the main characters all had the same name as the actors who played them. (Although the character Tony had the middle names "Aloysius St John" to distinguish him from the real man, who had just one quite mundane middle name: John.)
• Defictionalization: The detective novel Lady Don't Fall Backwards by Darcy Sarto, featured in "The Missing Page", was written and published by Alex Skerratt in 2013. It includes various sections lifted from the episode. Unlike the fictional version, the book's ending has been completed, ostensibly by the publisher after the author's death.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Sidney James played a Cockney and Bill Kerr played an Australian. However, both were South African.
  • Andrée Melly was an Englishwoman who put on a fake accent to play a Frenchwoman.
• Foreign Remake: Fleksnes Fataliteter — or Fleksnes for short — was a Norwegian-Swedish-Danish joint production^note the cast was predominantly Norwegian and the scripts were performed in Norwegian but Swedish and Danish actors were regularly featured that proved to be immensely popular thanks to brilliant casting and Cultural Translation work and ran on and off on Scandinavian TV from 1972 to 2002. Ray Galton and Alan Simpson even reunited, after ending their partnership in 1978, to pen Fleksnes' Grand Finale.
• Funny Character, Boring Actor:
  • Tony Hancock was a brilliant actor, but in real life was very introverted and suffered from alcoholism. It is somewhat painful watching the struggles of the character when you know the actor's life went into a downward spiral which ended in suicide.
  • Similarly, Kenneth Williams was a wildly popular comic actor, who was known for his outrageously camp characters. In real life, he was very conflicted about being gay, as he was brought up to be deeply religious, and considered it immoral. He died of an overdose, which may have been an accident or suicide.
  • In "The Blood Donor", Tony had recently been involved in a car accident, giving him difficulty remembering his lines, so they were written on boards behind the camera. He then got used to this and didn't bother to learn lines thereafter.
• Missing Episode:
  • Of the 103 radio episodes, 20 are missing (including the remake of "Cinderella Hancock"; the original version survives), including three episodes of the second series when Harry Secombe stood in for an unwell Tony Hancock. A few have been recovered from private recordings: three episodes, plus an extract of one of the missing ones, only exist in poor quality as a result. The missing radio episodes were re-recorded by the BBC as The Missing Hancocks in the late 2010s after several of the scripts were recovered by a rare book dealer and bought by actor Neil Pearson. The re-constructions starred Kevin McNally as "Tony Hancock", Kevin Eldon as "Bill Kerr", Simon Greenall as "Sid James" and Harry Secombe's son Andy for the episodes in which Secombe replaced Hancock.^note  McNally and Eldon went on to appear in the reconstruction of the three missing Dad's Army episodes in 2019 as, respectively, Captain Mainwaring and Lance Corporal Jones.
  • All of the first series of the TV series are missing, as well as all but one episode of the second series and approximately half of each of the third and fourth series. Many of the early episodes were live; the second series episode only survives because a BBC technician asked for a recording. The crudely-recorded soundtracks of seven episodes from series 4 have been recovered. One episode, series 2's "The New Neighbour", was remade by the BBC for its Sitcom Season in 2016, also starring Kevin McNally as Tony Hancock.
• On-Set Injury: When Irene Handl guest starred in "The Bequest", she insisted on having her chihuahua on-screen with her. This was unfortunate for Sid James, who got nipped by the dog and had to hold back swearing on live TV.
• Technology Marches On:
  • "The Radio Ham": Tony has a huge, valve-operated short-wave radio, for two-way communication. He says proudly "this has opened up completely new horizons to me: friends from all over the world." He then mutters that they are not really friends, which could be said for modern social media.
  • In the same episode, we see him storing milk in a bottle of cold water, instead of a fridge.
• Throw It In!: In "The Bequest", Tony tries to open a bottle of champagne for Linda (a girl supplied to him by a marriage bureau) but it explodes in her face. This was an accident, and Liz Fraser remarks in her autobiography that she didn't mind as it was a nice champagne.
• Uncredited Role: John Le Mesurier as an extra in "The East Cheam Centenary".
• Unfinished Episode:
  • One unused radio script, "The Counterfeiter", was planned for episode 11 of series 3. It was replaced with a now-lost remake of series 1's "Cinderella Hancock". It was finally recorded as part of The Missing Hancocks in 2019.
  • Nine television scripts were written but not used. Sometimes this was necessary due to topical references affected by current events, other times Tony Hancock rejected the scripts.
• Wag the Director:
  • One of the show's central conceits was that Tony Hancock was perennially unlucky and constantly taken advantage of, with his victories being very small and few and far between. As the real Tony Hancock began exerting more control behind the scenes, his character became more successful and started coming out on top at the end of each episode.
  • When Irene Handl guest starred in "The Bequest", she was insistent that she would have her dog with her while she gave her performance. This backfired when the dog nipped Sid James.
• What Could Have Been: When Harry Secombe was brought in to cover for Tony Hancock's absence, Secombe did such a good job that Ray Galton and Alan Simpson were prepared to make the substitution permanent and rename the show Secombe's Half Hour. However, Hancock returned to England at the nick of time. Hancock's first episode back is littered with references to how much everyone liked Secombe. (This may have been for the best for Secombe as well, as he was thus free to return to his role as Neddie in The Goon Show.)

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