HANCOCK’S HALF HOUR COLLECTIBLES Notes to Accompany Volume 4 All photographs copyright (C) BBC The Tony Hancock Appreciation Society is delighted to have given its support to the production of this new and unique series concerning the lost work of Tony Hancock. Undated publicity shot of Tony Hancock. The Tony Hancock Appreciation Society The THAS was formed in 1976 just 8 years after Tony had died at the young age of 44. The Society was formed with the aim of promoting and preserving the work of Hancock and, whilst this remains the aim of the Society today, the environment in which the Society now operates is very different from that of 1976, with all surviving radio and TV episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour 1 now commercially available to purchase. If we turn the clock back to 1976, we find a very different scenario. At the time, the BBC outsourced commercial releases to mainstream record labels such as Pye Records for Hancock’s Half Hour and Parlophone for The Goon Show. It wasn’t until 1967 that BBC records were created with the purpose of undertaking commercial releases of BBC programmes. At the time of the formation of the THAS in 1976, just two relatively complete radio episodes were available on the This is Hancock Long Player (LP) record released in 1960 (The Wild Man of the Woods (4/16 27 January 1957) and A Sunday Afternoon at Home (5/14 22 April 1958)). In addition, extracts from four radio shows were available on the LP Pieces of Hancock released in 1960 and a further nine extracts were included on the BBC records 1973 release Unique Hancock. Studio re-recordings of The Blood Donor (7/5) and The Radio Ham (7/3) were available on the Pye LP simply called Hancock (1961) whilst the Decca LP Its Hancock (1965) featured re-creations of The Missing Page (6/2) and The Reunion Party (6/4). The BBC released the first original TV soundtrack LP late in 1976. Called Hancock, this featured The Lift (T7/4 16 June 1961) and Twelve Angry Men (T5/4 16 October 1959). As can be seen, these LPs only provided commercial access to approximately six hours of material and this situation would not change until BBC Records started regular LP releases of Hancock’s Half Hour in 1980 with The Poetry Society (6/11 8 December 1959) and Sid’s Mystery Tours (6/9 24 November 1959). Whilst there was a dearth of commercially available material, in 1976 the BBC itself only held thirty-two Hancock’s Half Hour radio shows in its sound archive: one from Series 1, twelve from Series 4, ten from Series 5 and nine from Series 6 (Source: Tony Hancock: Artiste Roger Wilmut). However, fortunately, this was not the complete picture. A number of additional episodes survived, albeit in edited form, entirely due to the BBC issuing programmes to overseas radio stations under licence. These were issued by BBC Transcription Services in the form of LPs. It is worth considering these Transcription Services programmes here as it is often only the edited Transcription Services version of Hancock’s Half Hour which survives, particularly with regards to the first three series. Although the BBC has made extensive use of these transcription records over the years, their use has been significantly more widespread than just the BBC. Initially used as a sound source for the ‘talkies’ in the cinema, their use expanded and they were frequently used as a medium for record- ing auditions and interviews for radio stations and as a means of programme distribution between radio networks. BBC Transcription Services started life in the mid-1930s as The London Transcription Service fol- lowing the advent of The Empire Service. This was renamed The General Overseas Service in 1942 and eventually The World Service in 1988. BBC Transcription Services were formed to li- cence BBC Radio programmes to overseas broadcasters who were authorised to broadcast the programmes for a set period, usually 2 or 3 years. The programmes sold to overseas broadcast- ers in this way covered every part of the BBC’s output, including all types of music, drama, reli- gious and children’s programmes and, of course, comedy. Whilst the BBC wiped many broadcasts from its archive, BBC Transcription Services retained a copy and many of the surviving radio programmes from the 1940s onwards owe their survival to the fact that a Transcription Services copy was made. 2 The library was originally housed in an old convent (St Hilda’s) at the back of the Maida Vale studi- os. Later, it relocated to Kensington House on the South side of Shepherd’s Bush Green in the early 1960s and subsequently moved to the South West wing of Bush House where it remained until 2012. The Transcription Services recordings have now been absorbed into the Corporation’s Sound Archive. The original releases were in the form of 12-inch 78rpm (revolutions per minute) discs. Each of these discs contained no more than 3 or 4 minutes per side and so a radio operator needed to use 8 or more discs for a half hour programme, with great skill needed so that the audience couldn’t hear the join! In order to facilitate this, consecutive parts of a programme were on different discs. This enabled the radio operator to cue the start of the next part of the programme from a different disc from the one being played. This means that part 1 of the programme was on side 1 of disc 1, part 2 on side 1 of disc 2, part 3 on side 2 of disc 1 and so on. A lot of skill in undertaking this cue- ing and cross fading was clearly required if the broadcast was to go smoothly with no gaps! By around 1947, the 78rpm discs were replaced with 16-inch discs running at 33 1/3rpm. These coarse groove discs each contained approximately 10 minutes per side, so the requirement to cross fade throughout an episode was still required, just not so frequently. The fact that the Varie- ty Bandbox episode with Tony Hancock survives was as a result of BBC Transcription Services recoding the episode on one of these 16-inch discs. An extract from this programme can be heard on Hancock’s Half Hour Collectibles Volume 1. The original Hancock’s Half Hour Transcription Services discs were 16-inch discs. Numbered 1 – 23, these discs featured episodes from the first 3 series of Hancock’s Half Hour. Typically BBC Transcription Services pressed 100 copies of each disc only, with instructions to the overseas ra- dio network to destroy the disc at the end of the licence period. Clearly many of the radio stations did not follow these instructions as evidenced by the number of discs that circulate in collectors’ markets! 3 BBC Transcription Services 10” disc and cue sheets (following page) for Hancock’s Half Hour - 40: The Junk Man. Expiry Date 26.2.62. 4 Tony and Sid each try to impress Silvano in this production shot from The Italian Maid, February 1959, with Tony Hancock, Marla Landi and Sid James The next batch of Hancock releases were numbered 24 – 73 and featured episodes from the 4th to the 6th series, typically edited to approximately 28 minutes. These releases were on 10-inch 33 1/3 rpm microgroove discs with 15 minutes per side. Again, each episode was contained on 2 sepa- rate discs to enable the radio operator to cue in the second half of the episode from a second disc. Each disc was accompanied by a cue sheet which provided the radio operator with details of the dialogue from the beginning and end of each side of the disc. This ensured that the operator knew when to cue in the second disc when playing the second half of the programme. The cue sheet contains precise timings to assist with achieving a smooth cross fade. Interestingly, the opening announcement was amended on the BBC Transcription Services discs to ‘The BBC Presents..’ from the original ‘We Present…’ announcement on the original programmes so that the origin of the show (i.e. the BBC) was clear to overseas audiences. This second batch of discs included the 4 episodes specifically re-recorded for BBC Transcription Services in 1959 to remove topical references or to provide overseas radio networks with more flexibility in using the episodes. The 13th Of The Series became The 13th Of The Month to enable the episode to be placed anywhere in a series. The original The New Secretary was sequentially the first to feature Hattie Jacques and her arrival fitted into the flow of the preceding and subse- quent episodes. For the BBC Transcription Services version, Hattie’s arrival was provided in flashback so that it could be placed anywhere in a series. The Election Candidate had Hancock standing for The East Cheam Liberals in the original version and this was amended to The Inde- pendent Party for the new version. The Bolshoi Ballet became The Ballet Visit and removed all ref- erence to The Bolshoi Ballet, which was visiting the UK at the time the original episode was broad- cast in 1956. All 4 of these episodes were broadcast in the UK in January 1959. 5 Hancock is put to work by his Swiss master in this production shot from The Italian Maid, February 1959, with Tony Hancock and Frederick Schiller This set of discs was reissued later as 12-inch 33 1/3rpm discs, each of which contained a full epi- sode per side.