Entertainment For Lively Minds
Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock
Often on a sunday afternoon at home (arf!) in the 1980's a pre teen myself would be chortling along to this LP and reading the bio text on the back. Never mind that the man died years before I was born, he was as funny to me as any of the TV stars of the day.
These rerecordings of The Lad's finest half hours sound less stilted than their TV originals plus (in the case of The Blood Donor) Hancock isn't reading them off cue cards with concussion.
What is it about this man that spoke to me down through the ages? Is it the performance and the writing which are so timeless. Is he a perfect English archtype that remains constant? Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?'
From 5:30 mins onwards the mime sequence is sheer bliss (check out Sid James and the lady trying not to crack up)
BTW that album is charity shop favourite and well worth a quid of anyones hard earned
- More from DogFacedBoy.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Too many glorious moments to mention
but just an armful anyway:
- in The Reunion, when he spends a slient minute trying to remember an old comrade, with an ever-changing face
- the first couple of minutes of Sunday Afternoon At Home: how a script containing little other than "oh dear me" managed to turn into radio comedy gold
- his occasional lapses into Charles Laughton - "Mr Christian ..."
- "Stone me, what a life".
The radio shows really are superior to the TV ones, even after allowing for the better supporting cast in the former. Wonderful, wonderful stuff ...
Loads...
...of Hancock on Spotify.
As a youngster...
... in the mid-70s I used to borrow the records & tapes from the local library and tape the odd Radio 2 repeats that came occasionally after the chart show on Sunday nights, and play them endlessly. I still have a hankering to the before-I-was-born days when these shows emptied the streets on Sunday nights when they were first broadcast.
No-one wrote "tragedy disguised as comedy" like Galton & Simpson (see also Steptoe & Son of course), and that's why they still resonate (the more "realistic" episodes at least.)
And I couldn't possibly condone such behaviour, but I'm told there's usually someone on Ebay selling MP3 disks containing dozens of the radio shows at reasonable prices...
The Rebel
is a very underrated film. Completely separate from the radio (and tv) shows. But very very funny.
oh you temptress!
"I did all that from memory, that is women as I see them"
"oh, you poor man, knocking around with women like that"
"I'm not from the realist school, I'm an impressionist"
"Well it doesn't impress me"
Are you sought out at parties?