Comic genius who never heard the White Album.
1.
The 1985 repeats and video releases contained a few instances of revisionist-editing:
a) Those in charge of the re-issues missed the point in preserving classic shows as they were. As such, bad camerawork was not tolerated, and certain shots involved the insertion of new cutaways. A particularly obvious one was in ‘The Emigrant’ (18/3/60), where - following the line ‘We’ve never had it so good’ - the camera fails to follow Tony as he walks towards the table. A slow-motion cutaway of Sid James was pasted over this - a misjudged decision for two reasons: (a) because the picture quality of the time made slow-motion footage very obvious and ugly, and (b) because the shot they used is shown again - this time for real - barely seconds later.
b) The sub-punchline where Tony misses the last bus home has been cut from ‘The Ladies’ Man’ (15/4/60). The cut section is presented here in bold:
TONY Well my way is not your way. I’m far too couth. Giving the shoes a shine up the back of the trouser leg is not me and it never has been. I like to do things properly. Everybody’s not like you, you know. Don’t worry - I’ll think of something.
[(Cut to long-shot: a bus driver is staring at Tony and Sid.)
BUS DRIVER I don’t know what you’re waiting for - last bus went hours ago. (Exits)
TONY (Seething) Ohh...another late night, five miles to walk home and with feet like mine!
SID Oh, never mind. Billy Butlin might be waiting there for us...with a cheque. Ya-ha-ha...]
(Sting; fade to black)
'Slow motion cutaways -
I ask you!'
Reasons for this cut remain obscure. It looks like the bus driver waited too long before delivering his line, although this pause could be justified in terms of character (he is baffled by the sight of two men standing in the cold, and peers at them strangely). The pause could not be tightened up either, because we cut to the long-shot on the word ‘something’. Quite why the video editor had the right to splice out sections for artistic reasons is another mystery altogether.
[NOTE: The 1999 video-release of ‘The Ladies’ Man’ (where it appears alongside three previously-unreleased episodes) reinstates the scene.]
c) The end credits were re-created, presumably because they believed them to be too crude and unreadable for modern audiences.
[NOTE: More recent videos and repeats have not been tampered with in this way.]
4.
Original editions of the LPs, released in the 1980s, omitted the signature tune in order to avoid paying royalties. This meant that the first line had to be faded up, and was consequently either inaudible or missing completely.
[NOTE: Subsequent cassette re-issues, on the BBC Radio Collection, have reinstated this music, and a sleevenote proudly announced this fact. The even more recent re-issues do not consider it worth mentioning.]
5.
The Hancock Estate is now owned by Tony’s brother, Roger. He has a certain degree of control over which episodes get repeated or released on video, although it has never been confirmed exactly how effectual this power is. He unsuccessfully attempted to block the video release of what he considered to be ‘weaker’ episodes (e.g., ‘The Cruise’, ‘The Alpine Holiday’), although it is not clear whether he eventually relented or whether the BBC overpowered him. The 1996/97 repeats on BBC2 consisted of all the surviving episodes, bar three - the Christmas special ‘Ericsson The Viking’ was simply unseasonal, while two other shows - ‘Hancock’s 43 Minutes’ (23/12/57) and ‘There’s An Airfield At The Bottom Of My Garden’ (9/12/75) - were definitely absent due to Roger’s intervention. Both are substandard shows, but ‘There’s An Airfield...’ is famous for the scene where the set began to collapse halfway through the live broadcast. This was intended as a sub-punchline for the episode, but the demolition began too early and most of the cast were left corpsing their way through the rest of their lines. This is a legendary broadcast, but it has never been re-shown since its original transmission. With Roger Hancock in charge, this is unlikely to change.
6) The BBC has been notoriously bad at releasing Hancock’s Half Hour on video. In 1985, they released six tapes, each featuring three ‘classic’ episodes - five of them featured one episode from the Hancock (i.e., sans Sid) series and two episodes from Hancock’s Half Hour, while a sixth volume featured three Hancock’s Half Hour episodes. As such, the entire Hancock series was catered for bar ‘The Succession - Son & Heir’ (presumably because it wasn’t considered ‘memorable’, despite it being Hancock’s final broadcast for the BBC). All six volumes were tweaked for slack vision-mixing and featured new end-credits shot on videotape.
By the early 1990s, only one volume (the edition featuring ‘The Blood Donor’, ‘The Missing Page’ and ‘Twelve Angry Men’) was left undeleted. In place of the absent tapes, The Very Best Of Hancock was released - this release, featuring five episodes, was essentially the entire Hancock series with ‘The Succession - Son & Heir’ once again missing. As such, the wording of the title was very odd: it wasn’t the best of Hancock, but it was indeed the best of Hancock (in fact, it was the nearly-complete Hancock!). It just so happened that the first five episodes of the series (‘The Bedsitter’, ‘The Bowmans’, ‘The Radio Ham’, ‘The Lift’ and ‘The Blood Donor’) read - to the untrained eye - like a list of his best-loved episodes, when in fact most of the stronger Half Hour shows (‘Lord Byron Lived Here’, ‘The Ladies’ Man’, ‘The Reunion Party’) were now unavailable. In a further display of idiocy, the BBC slapped a ‘Featuring Sid James’ banner on the cover.
Subsequent video releases were even more ill-planned. In 1996, a video of three early telerecordings was released (‘Competitions: How To Win Money And Influence People’, ‘Air Steward Hancock, Last Of The Many’ and ‘The Alpine Holiday’). The BBC had gone from one extreme to the other: they had deleted the edited ‘classic’ shows, but had now released three of its most joyless episodes. The egregious ‘Alpine Holiday’ (the only-surviving episode from Series 2) should only ever be viewed as an archive piece, but here it was presented in a typical ‘3 more hilarious episodes’ type fashion, which did no justice to Hancock’s reputation. Another volume, featuring three more, previously-unreleased and comparatively average episodes (‘The Cruise’, ‘The Tycoon’, ‘The Babysitters’) was released in 1997, and this was followed by a re-release of the only 1985 video to feature three Sid shows (‘The Big Night’, ‘The Emigrant’, ‘The Poison Pen Letters’). The most recent release features three strong, previously-unreleased episodes (‘The Train Journey’, ‘Sid In Love’, ‘The Photographer’), alongside ‘The Ladies’ Man’. Quite what the BBC are up to is anybody’s guess.
[NOTE (1): On 7 June 1999, in a further display of laziness, the BBC re-released The Very Best Of Hancock as part of its ‘Comedy Greats’ series, alongside similar compilations of Ronnie Barker, Cook & Moore and Morecambe & Wise.]
[NOTE (2): 17 Hancock’s Half Hour shows remain unavailable on video. They are: ‘Lord Byron Lived Here’, ‘The Reunion Party’, ‘The Two Murderers’, ‘The Crown Vs James S’, ‘The Economy Drive’, ‘The Cold’, ‘The Set That Failed’, ‘The East Cheam Centenary’, ‘The Oak Tree’, ‘The New Nose’, ‘The Knighthood’, ‘Spanish Interlude’, ‘Football Pools’, ‘The Succession - Son & Heir’, ‘Hancock’s 43 Minutes’, ‘There’s An Airfield At The Bottom Of My Garden’, ‘Ericsson The Viking’ .]
6.
As an illustration of how badly the BBC treats its archive comedy shows, here is a list of the Hancock/Hancock’s Half Hour repeats broadcast in 1996 and 1997. The run was heavily-publicised from the outset, but it soon became clear that it was being elbowed out of the schedules. 37 out of 63 episodes still exist in the BBC archives, and BBC2 repeated 34 of them in this shuffled order:
1: THE BLOOD DONOR (8/8/96; Thur 10pm)
2: THE BOWMANS (15/8/96; Thur 10pm)
3: LORD BYRON LIVED HERE
(22/8/96; Thur 10pm)
4: THE REUNION PARTY (29/8/96; Thur 10pm)
5: THE TWO MURDERERS (5/9/96; Thur 10pm)
6: THE LAWYER: THE
CROWN VERSUS JAMES, S. HANCOCK, QC, DEFENDING(10/9/96; Tue 10pm)
7: THE ALPINE HOLIDAY (17/9/96; Tue 10pm)
8: AIR STEWARD
HANCOCK, LAST OF THE MANY (24/9/96; Tue 10pm)
9: COMPETITIONS:
HOW TO WIN MONEY AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE (1/10/96; Tue 10pm)
10: THE ECONOMY DRIVE (8/10/96; Tue 10pm)
[THE EAST CHEAM CENTENARY was destined for transmission on 15/10/96 but later postponed (in favour of a documentary about Damon Hill); an attempt to re-schedule the episode for 4/11/96 was unsuccessful, meaning the episode was not shown until 15/1/97]
11: THE COLD (22/10/96; Tue 10pm)
[The repeats mysteriously disappeared from BBC2 throughout November and December]
12: THE SET THAT FAILED (8/1/97; Wed 7pm)
13: THE EAST CHEAM CENTENARY (15/1/97; Wed 7pm)
[There was no episode on 22/1/97, because of the tennis]
14: THE OAK TREE (29/1/97; Wed 7pm)
15:
THE NEW NOSE (5/2/97; Wed 7pm)
16: THE KNIGHTHOOD (12/2/97; Wed
7pm)
17: THE POISON PEN LETTERS (19/2/97; Wed 7pm)
18: THE
TRAIN JOURNEY (26/2/97; Wed 7pm)
19: THE CRUISE (5/3/97; Wed
7pm)
20: THE BIG NIGHT (12/3/97; Wed 7pm)
[The series disappeared yet again after this episode, returning in May as part of the ‘Menzone’ (‘for men’) strand of programmes on Saturday mornings. THE TYCOON was preceded by a short interview with Jeff Hammonds, who spoke about Hancock’s riches.]
21: THE TYCOON (10/5/97; Sat 11:40am)
22: SPANISH INTERLUDE (17/5/97; Sat 11:45am)
23: THE
EMIGRANT (24/5/97; Sat - billed at 11:45; actual time 11:40am)
24: THE LADIES’ MAN (31/5/97; Sat - billed at 11:40am;
actual time 11:55am)
25: SID IN LOVE (7/6/97; Sat - billed at
11:55am; actual time 11:52am)
26: THE BABYSITTERS (14/6/97; Sat
- billed at 12:15am; actual time 12:35am)
27: FOOTBALL POOLS (21/6/97; Sat 11:55am)
[No episode on 28/6/97, because of Glastonbury; also no episode on 5/7/97 - no reason given. The remaining seven shows were no longer part of the ‘Menzone’ strand.]
28: THE PHOTOGRAPHER (12/7/97; Sat 11:50am)
29: THE SUCCESSION: SON AND HEIR (19/7/97; Sat 11:45am)
30:
THE LIFT (26/7/97; Sat 11:05am)
31: TWELVE ANGRY MEN (2/8/97;
11:15am)
32: THE RADIO HAM (9/8/97; 11:05am)
33: THE
BEDSITTER (16/8/97, 12:05am)
34: THE MISSING PAGE (23/8/97; 11:00am)
Episodes excluded at the request of the Hancock Estate: HANCOCK’S 43 MINUTES and THERE’S AN AIRFIELD AT THE BOTTOM OF MY GARDEN.
Episode excluded due to the BBC’s incompetence: ERICSSON THE VIKING
[NOTE: In 1998, BBC2 repeated 'The Alpine Holiday' as a tribute to Kenneth Williams. Not as a tribute to
comedy, then…]