01/04/2009
How We Met: Ray Galton & Alan Simpson (Independent)
Alan Simpson OBE, 79, is a comedy writer and one half of the prodigious writing partnership Galton and Simpson, responsible for penning Steptoe and Son, Hancock's Half Hour and Dawson's Weekly. He lives alone in Surrey
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01/07/2009
Joy of Six: TV title sequences (Guardian Unlimited)
1. The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin Great title sequences should capture the mood of an entire programme in an instant. And the BBC's comedy department didn't get where it is today without such title sequences. Anthony Aloysius Hancock's bumbling pomposity was laid bare with one tuba trill and his elongated "hhhhhaitch" . The playful spirit of Harry Worth's loveable eejit was ...
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12/31/2008
2009: Major anniversaries December (Daily Telegraph)
Mother Teresa of Calcutta was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and folk tale collector Wilhelm Grimm died.
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12/31/2008
We pay tribute and say a last goodbye to the people who left their mark on our lives in 2008 (Daily Mirror)
Charlton Heston, 84, Hollywood star and gun lobbyist who won a best actor Oscar for the epic Ben-Hur.
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12/31/2008
Late and great of 2008 (Daily Mirror)
We pay tribute and say a last goodbye to the people who left their mark on our lives
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12/19/2008
Herald columnist dies aged 55 (holdthefrontpage.co.uk)
A weekly newspaper columnist who "everybody adored" has died aged just 55. Worthing Herald diarist Shan Lloyd, left, had been ill for several months and passed away six months after the death of her husband, Hancock's Half Hour actor Hugh Lloyd.
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12/15/2008
Zadie Smith: Jokes run through a family. (The New Yorker)
My father had few enthusiasms, but he loved comedy. He was a comedy nerd, though this is so common a condition in Britain as to be almost not worth mentioning. Like most Britons, Harvey gathered his family around the defunct hearth each night to watch the same half-hour comic . . .
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12/12/2008
Tony Hancock, By John Fisher (Independent)
If Tony Hancock hadn't killed himself in 1968, what would he be doing today? Would he still be on peak-time television, like his variety contemporary, Bruce Forsyth? Or would he be enjoying a well-earned rest, like his old pal Eric Sykes?
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