Face to Face Interview

John Freeman interview with Hancock


Face to Face Interview - Part 1 (of 4)

This is a full transcription of the interview including all the pauses in the speech, the ers, erms and repetitions. These nuances have been included to give the reader a feel for the atmosphere and mood of the interview and, more specifically, of Hancock.

Hancock on Face to Face, BBC

About the Face to Face Interview

Face to Face was a TV show in which John Freeman, former editor of The New Statesman and later to become British Ambassador to the USA, asked straight forward and often probing questions to, usually, intellectually heavyweight personalities of the day. Hancock was as surprised as anybody when he was asked if he would like to participate in the show. After some deliberation Hancock agreed and the resulting examination of Hancock's troubled personality was so stark that the BBC had their doubts about whether or not it should be aired at all; indeed, Freeman was forced to write a letter to the Daily Telegraph following the broadcast to counter the public criticism his interview style had received.

Class-obsessed Freeman's manner was neither aggressive nor provocative but the questions were so forthright that, combined with the camera work of the show which focused almost exclusively on the face of the interviewee, the interview was more like a session on a psychiatrist's couch and Hancock, his whole id laid bare for public scrutiny, was made to look at times a rather pathetic victim and hopelessly aspiring intellectual.

The interview came at a time when Hancock was in a state of professional flux. He had just finished his last Hancock episode with Sid James and was about to start work on 'The Rebel'; in the interview, Hancock alludes to developments he has in mind for the character of "Hancock" but cannot give any details. The truth was that Hancock was heartily sick of the series as it was and wanted to, among other things, move from Railway Cuttings, drop the colloquialisms like "Stone Me", drop the Homburg hat and drop Sid James! The Face to Face interview had a profound effect on Hancock, causing him take a long look at himself and his life.
Interview Transcription

Freeman:
Tony Hancock. The whole of Britain knows you in your professional comic mask...and tonight we want to try and find out what lies behind the mask. Now, are you in the mood to come clean?

Hancock:
Yes indeed.

Freeman:
You know you're on your own?

Hancock:
Yes.

Freeman:
You're without your scriptwriters.

Hancock:
Yes.

Freeman:
And you'll tell us the truth?

Hancock:
I'll try to, yes.

Freeman:
Do you like talking about yourself or not?

Hancock:
Erm, yes up to a point. Particularly in relation to what I do.

Freeman:
Well in that case...

Hancock:
...in relation to comedy, yes.

Freeman:
Alright. Now, I'll ask you first of all, why are you a comic?

Hancock:
Erm, well I think I always certainly wanted to be from the first time I can remember. And erm, perhaps looking like this it was perhaps the only thing I could do. So I turned these sort of deficiencies into a, a workable thing if you understand what I mean.

Freeman:
Yes, but let's go a bit deeper than that. Do you think the world is a comic place or is it a tragic place?

Hancock:
Oh I think it consists of the two things. It's both funny and sad which seem to me to be the two basic ingredients of good comedy.

Freeman:
"basic ingredients", what is being funny? Is it mixing them together? How do you tell what is funny?

Hancock:
Well I think they exist together anyway.

Freeman:
Yes.

Hancock:
By the way we live...erm, when we attempt to be affected or pompous or...er...how can I say? Erm, we are sort of all unsure of ourselves in what we live in...erm, we try to...live in a certain way. We try to...we are, I suppose to a certain extent all affected and erm, that is both funny and sad I think.

Freeman:
So that being funny is showing how people are affected? Is that what you're trying to say?

Hancock:
I think so. I think you expose your own pomposity and other peoples' and get probably to the real truth of the way you live.

Freeman:
And so that being funny is part of the business of finding out the truth about life?

Hancock:
Entirely.

Freeman:
Yes.

Hancock:
Not to do...you can't think of it in any other way.

Freeman:
Now, your own comedy character, the one we know in...

Hancock:
(laughs) Yes.

Freeman:
...Hancock's Half Hour.

Hancock:
Yes, yes...

Freeman:
...swagger, bluster and then, not being very effectual in the end. Is that right?

Hancock:
Er...I'm not entirely sure you can sort of really theorise entirely about these things. As I say, this is all sort of part of what you are and part of what everybody else is. It's er...a comment on yourself and a comment on everybody else I think.

Freeman:
Well now, how much is this a comment on yourself?

Hancock:
Oh to a great extent, to a great extent. I mean, shall we say, the character that I...it isn't a character I play, that I put on and off like a coat. It is er...greatly a part of me and a part of everybody else that I see.

Freeman:
Erm, are you trying to say with it something which is, which is serious? Is there a message or are you simply trying to make people laugh?

Hancock:
Erm...w...not exactly a message. I think if you go to that extent, I think perhaps you lose the...the intuitive thing which is bad...erm...no. I think it's just a true observation of the way things are, as far as you can see it yourself.

Freeman:
Looking at yourself as a comic after all in the, in the television and film era, you've seen yourself as a comic...

Hancock:
Yes.

Freeman:
...very often which many of the great comics didn't. What is there about you, you think, which makes people laugh?

Hancock:
Well, it's difficult to say. I don't think I can be really objective about that...erm...I think I know what my own mistakes are as I make them. I don't think I gain anything by seeing myself.

Freeman:
Is it facial expression? Is it good scriptwriters? Is it a, a...a.. a sense of timing? Is it a knowledge of what constitutes comedy? What, what is it? You must have some idea.

Hancock:
It's a knowledge of what constitutes living in general I think. As I say you, you take erm...the.. erm, weaknesses of your own character and of other peoples' characters and you exploit them. You, you...you show yourself up and you show them up.

Freeman:
Now it's often been said of you, I don't know whether this is true or not, that one thing that you do in your comedy is to ridicule the things that you dislike in life. Is that true?

Hancock:
Er, yes. That also applies to the things that you dislike in yourself.

Freeman:
Alright. Now, what are they?

Hancock:
Oh I think a certain erm...affectation. I mean I.. I know for instance I often find in a script...erm...things that I've said in all seriousness which they later write up in detail and absolutely which later turn out to be funny. You know, I've been angry or something like that and I...I look at this and I think, "yes that's very funny", unfortunately. Yet it's something I'd said at the time and been rather pompous about and...erm, they have noticed this and, er...written it down and there it is.

Freeman:
This is an example of you debunking yourself. Now, how much do you try and debunk other people as well?

Hancock:
Oh well you do that...er...shall we say generously...erm...yes you do. You debunk pomposity and erm...affectation.

Freeman:
What are the things, can you tell me that there are particular things in the world that you know you dislike; personal characteristics first of all. Is it pomposity that you're after?

Hancock:
You don't dislike them, you accept them.

Freeman:
But do...do you all...

Hancock:
...I mean, you're tolerant towards them.

Freeman:
...but these are what you'd like to pillory if you could?

Hancock:
Yes. As I say, both in yourself and in, in...in everything that you see.

Freeman:
Pomposity's the first one...anything else? Bad temper? Greed?

Hancock:
All those things yes, I think.

Freeman:
And in the world...apart from people in the world outside, what would you most like to reform about the world if you had the chance?

Hancock:
Erm...I'm not capable of doing that.

Freeman:
Well, don't you have dreams about it?

Hancock:
Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no. You just observe and...and, and practice, erm...within the limitations of your own talent what you see around you.

Freeman:
You've never dreamed of playing "Hamlet"?

Hancock:
No, no, no, no, no. I'd hardly...I don't think that's for me really.