Now chaps, everyone said that it was really you two that were sort of responsible for Hancock's...without you he was nothing. What's your reaction to that?
Ray:
Well it's very nice, very nice but we just happened to find the perfect voice for what we were saying really it was just a lucky coincidence, you know, we found
each other. You know Hancock was a perfect comedian, perfect reader you know a wonderful character comic. Just lucky all round I think
Alan:
Lucky being in the right place at the right time and we all took advantage of it, it was a good...
Ray:
We didn't realise you know, it was just a job in work for us all
Kevin:
Yeah, but he rapidly went down hill you know after you parted company, that's true to say isn't it?
Alan:
Well, yeah there's a lot of reasons for that apart from you know...
Ray:
...well two main reasons
Alan:
...two reasons: one was booze and the other one was the fact that we'd written everything he'd done for nine years which consisted of what? A hundred and sixty half hour shows and a film and stage work and you can't just sort of walk away and...
Ray:
...start...
Alan:
...start you know as if nothing has happened so he had to get some, you know, other writers who had as much affinity with him as we did and that's a difficult thing to do after all that time
Kevin:
Was there much animosity towards the end?
Alan:
Not animosity
Ray:
Not towards the end. there was a certain amount at the break but not towards the end, you know, luckily we were
immediately taken in hand by the BBC who offered us our own show which was 'Comedy Playhouse'
Kevin:
Sure
Ray:
And that was wonderful for us because it enabled us to write different shows every week with a different cast and what we like and how we liked and everything else and the Steptoe started out of that so...
Alan:
...introduced us to the world of actors...
Kevin:
Absolutely
Alan:
...where actors...
Ray:
And we were dominant, we told 'em what to do
Alan:
We were the governors, you see actors they, you see, comedians count, look at each page and count where the jokes are and actors they just learn the lines and do 'em - which is a great luxury
Kevin:
Absolutely, we'll come on to Steptoe & Son in just a minute but I just want to ask you just one more thing about Hancock, and that's the fact that one of the most famous lines ever of course was, and you've heard this before, from The Blood Donor you know when he said, "It's very nearly an armful". Now, do you remember writing it and which one of you came up with the idea?
Alan:
I couldn't...no, the answer to that is. I remember being busy doing the script but the fact that we work so closely together it's almost virtually impossible to separate...to say who did what
Kevin:
If you could imagine...
Alan:
You know, sometimes half, we'd do a joke, half of a line would be one of us
and the other one would finish it
Kevin:
Yeah, if you can imagine though that this line has been pulled out of the Hancock stuff more than anything else, would that have been the line that you'd have chosen
Alan:
Probably, I should think yes, it's...
Kevin:
It's a good 'un
Alan:
...it's probably the most famous line that we did. I mean, my personal favourite comes from Steptoe, you know, when asked whether he was breast-fed as a baby and he said, "Well yeah, well we couldn't afford proper milk". That's my favourite line but there you are
Kevin:
I remember.
D' you know that, I mean, Steptoe and Hancock are now being repeated on TV of course, do you make a point of watching them when they're back on again?
Ray:
Well yes, I mean we have them on video tapes but there's something missing. It's nice to know that actually when you do watch the shows it is going out and being watched at the same time by millions of people there is that extra thrill so yes, I try to watch them yes
Kevin:
Did Steptoe then give you that freedom that Hancock never could
Ray:
Well only in so far as that we were not writing for a 'personality' we were writing for actors so they wouldn't say, "Oh I wouldn't say that" or "This is not me...(you
know).. I can't possibly say something about I vote for the Labour Party because I'm a personality". These are actors so, no...yes it gave us a lot of freedom from that point of view. And you could...even though there was censorship there that makes it laughable today, but we were allowed far more freedom in our thoughts for these characters
Alan:
Choice of subject
Ray:
Yeah, choice of subjects and how one puts them across
Kevin:
Because the story goes that it was such a success and you didn't realise it was gonna be a success 'cos I think you went off on holiday
Alan:
That's right, yes that's absolutely true
Kevin:
...and then you heard the BBC had been repeating them constantly or something?
Alan:
Well no, what happened is...it happens quite often these days but this was the first time they ran the series, I think it was a six-week
series, and they started repeating it the following week. So in actual fact it ran for 12 weeks and they'd never done that before and Ray and I were
on holiday after the last show went out and picked up the paper to find that they'd repeated them all from scratch 'cos it caught on round about show number 3and shows 4,5 and 6, you know, were an enormous hit and so the BBC, you know, very imaginative at the time
immediately repeated them. So when we got back from our holiday to find that it was the talk of the country
Kevin:
Yeah absolutely. What about the choice of Wilfred Bramble and Harold H. Corbett for the parts? Were they just perfect?
Alan:
Well absolutely, I mean we'd never met either of them, never worked with either of them but we knew them from their work, so when we were half way
through writing the script we already knew who we would ideally like to get to play the parts. So we got hold of the BBC and asked them to put an
availability check in and, I mean, Harry Corbett was playing Shakespeare at the Bristol Old Vic' and I'm not sure what
Wilfred was doing anyway the BBC sent them a copy of the script and they agreed to do it. In fact Harry took a week off from a 2-week season at the Bristol Old Vic' in order to do it
Kevin:
So what was it like on the sets in those days? Presumably you were there or were you still working like hell for the next one?
Ray:
No, we always got there for the rehearsals and we would go to at least 3 rehearsals per week and then all day on the day of transmission which is the
only day allowed in the studio
Alan:
That's right, yeah
Ray:
Well, I mean on the first recording, which was at the Comedy Playhouse before it became a series, I mean Harry
Corbett was absolutely appalled when he came into the studio and saw all these banks of seats and said, "What are all these seats doing here?" and they said, "Well,
that's for the audience" and he really nearly walked...he said, "I shall have to rethink my entire performance". And so we thought that would be the
end of that, being a straight actor and he would never want to do a series. In fact we didn't really want to do a series it was only the BBC
insistence...and kept badgering us, and that became our last shot in our locker that we said, "Alright then, if Harry Corbett and Wilfred Bramble want to do a series we shall do a series", thinking they wouldn't and they both jumped at it and so we were scuppered
Kevin:
And is it true that, when we say that, when Wilfred Bramble came onto the set he was the perfect gentleman, beautifully spoken...?
Alan:
When he came off the set. After...the first thing he did when he came off the set have a shave, put his proper teeth in 'cos he used to have a rendered-down pair of
teeth all blackened up and holes in 'em and gaps that he used to wear for the part. So the first thing he did - have a shave, put his new teeth in, have a shampoo, comb his hair
and when he got dressed, I mean he was absolutely immaculately dressed always off set, I mean, beautifully creased trousers, shiny shoes I mean he...really dapper. And he used to
wander out with the audience all around and nobody recognised him whereas Harry was better dressed on the set than he was off so they all recognised him
immediately
Kevin:
Crikey. I just wanna come on, cos we're running close to the end of our time now...
Alan:
Oh right, that went quickly
Kevin:
...I want to come on about the recent
Paul Merton remakes of Hancock, now, I liked 'em lots of people didn't, what's your thinking on it?
Ray:
Well, yeah, you liked 'em lots of people didn't and that's really the answer. I think most of the people that did like them were the younger people that didn't know Hancock - at least not from the originals. We said to Paul Merton long before this happened that if you do them you will be crucified by the press and we weren't far short of that. But there has been a precedent to this. Many years ago we...it was the BBC's idea to recreate the Hancock's again with Arthur Lowe and we actually made a pilot with Arthur Lowe and, 'The Economy Drive', and it was Jimmy
Beck who was the spiv in Dad's army played the part of Sid James and everybody said, "Right, this is wonderful, we're gonna do a series" and about a week later Jimmy Beck died unfortunately and so we
all thought, "Oh well that's it, don't bother". So it's not a new idea, it's not a new idea about recreating them
Alan:
It was very good working with Paul, I mean, from our point of view it was a wonderful opportunity to work with a new generation of comedians, I mean, all the ones we've ever worked with are all dead
Ray:
And the other thing about Paul is he's so respectful to Hancock and the scripts, you know, he...
Kevin:
Cos he was a big fan wasn't he?
Ray:
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. He knows his work backwards so it was very respectful
Alan:
It was a very, very enjoyable series to do, I mean Paul is a smashing bloke, he worked very, very hard and, you know, even people...the Hancock fans...people
who like Hancock didn't go so much...the ones he did that were nothing to do with Hancock I think he did extremely well
Kevin:
That's right
Ray:
I sort of think, you know, he did the Radio Ham brilliantly as well
Alan:
And I thought he did the one where...the one on his own, where he did the Hancock alone, I think he was very, very good in that
Kevin:
So are you still, are you still writing...
Alan:
I tell you, it was the most successful comedy series that ITV did last winter so that speaks for...
Kevin:
That's good
Alan:
Absolutely
Kevin:
Absolutely, are you still writing together now?
Alan:
Well we're doing another series, we've just come from meeting Paul actually about half an hour ago we were with him, we
were just discussing scripts, we're doing another series of Paul Merton in Galton & Simpson's whatever...so we're gonna do another 7 next year
Kevin:
We look forward to that. Of all the things that you've written, Ray and Alan, is there one episode, one particular sketch that stands
out more than anything else for you both
Ray:
A sketch?
Kevin:
Or any particular bit of work, any part of Hancock
Ray:
Now and again I think of one that really made Alan and myself roll about the floor in helpless laughter for hours - we couldn't write
it because of it. And it was Sid James selling Hancock a bodiless turtle, it was just a carapace, and Tony brought it back to Sid and
complained that there was nothing inside of it and Sid was telling him it was hibernating and he said, you know, poke a stick through it,
y' know, he said I've done all that, y' know, that really had us on the floor
Alan:
Yeah
Ray:
That, to me, was one of the funniest things that I remember, well, the most enjoyable thing we ever wrote
Alan:
I think one of the best Steptoe's as well was the one we did with Leonard Rossiter, we called it 'The Desperate Hours' when the 2 prisoners escaped and...
Kevin:
Oh, right, yeah
Alan:
...and holed up in the Steptoes' house. The thing is, when you watch that again, is that Leonard Rossiter gave such a beautiful acting performance and he brought the best out of Harry H. Corbett who suddenly realised that he wasn't gonna do a
caricature, this was for real. And there were 2 lovely performances from Harry and Leonard Rossiter and the 2 old men were very good too. So very satisfying show to watch that is, from our point of view anyway
Kevin:
Ray, Alan, it's been a real treat talking to you
Alan:
Oh it's been a great pleasure
Ray:
And you
Kevin:
I wish we could keep going forever, I bet we could if we wanted to
Alan:
And I do hope Northampton Town do better this year
Kevin:
I'm sure we will, next time you're in Northampton...
Ray:
Only if they play...er...Hampton
Kevin:
Ray Galton, Alan Simpson, thanks for being our guests
