THE SHEIKH

Hancock's Half Hour (Radio) First Series - Programme 14

Hancock is signed up by Sid's film studio to appear as a dramatic actot - in films shot with a box camera.

Cast
Tony Hancock
Bill Kerr
Moira Lister
Sidney James
Alan Simpson
Kenneth Williams

Programme Guide

Here we have yet another script utilising Tony Hancock's vanity and gullibility for laughs.

The titular part is played by The Lad 'Imself. The role of villain, which requires no acting ability on his part whatsoever, is taken by Mr. Sidney James. These scripts are an object lesson in how not to take advice or indeed how not to follow one's dreams and fancies into the real world. For we are shown all too clearly, in so many of the shows, how Hancock's ship of idealistic aspiration is, time and time again, smashed and wrecked on the rocks of harsh reality.

We laugh at Tony Hancock and his exaggerated disasters as we see, in him, ourselves and our own minor tribulations. We laugh too, safe in the knowledge that 'there but for good fortune goes you or I'

The script concerns Hancock having become rather obsessed with the idea of a career in films. So much so, he even signs a film contract with the Sid James Film Studios. He begins his preparations for his hoped-for movie star status, practising his autograph and so on. The only problem is that Sid, his eye on the starlets and hand in the till, intends to shoot Hancock's first epic with a box camera.

The basic idea of this story was adapted somewhat and used to good effect in the television series of "Hancock's Half Hour" in the programme called "Ericson the Viking" - this was the first television Half Hour not to go out live, having been recorded some ten days prior to transmission. The main advantage of televising this story was, presumably, that we were able to see Hancock's slight arm and body movements as Sid took each still shot.

The original 'Sheikh' story, though, rather begs the question: was the script inspired by Tony Hancock's ambition, privately-voiced to Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, for a film career,? The writers often turned around Tony's real-life thoughts and ideas and used them successfully in the shows privately-voiced However, the irony here, when viewed against his own short-lived film careers, is all too apparent. Galton and Simpson so brilliantly and completely captured the man in their scripts that sadly, Tony Hancock, in the last seven years of his life, often appeared to be acting out scenes from a Galton and Simpson script.