Hancock's Hour and a Half
Over the weekend, as a little treat, I attended a screening of three episodes of Hancock's Half Hour at London's Riverside Studios, which was the location of their shooting some sixty-six years earlier; I'm down with the kids (of 1957). The event was staged by the Tony Hancock Appreciation Society , of which I'm a member, and was the third screening at the venue, though I couldn't make the previous two due to the recent rail strike hoo-ha. So this trip was a case of third-time lucky for me. My last visit to the studios was in 2008, when Glyn and I filmed a promotional interview for our first Edinburgh show, The Balloon Debate (footage I recall seeing once at the time, but never since). Being TV nerds, we were excited to be at the former site of TFI Friday for work reasons. We probably even hummed the opening riff to The Riverboat Song as we walked around the building. It's no secret that I love Hancock's Half Hour. Why would it be? The writing's timele