Radio Blood Donor Tony Hancock
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In Britain we have a very discerned comedy writing cooperative relationship called Galton and Simpson. These two were responsible for a good deal of of the funniest circumstance comedies on radio and television from the 1950s to the 1980s. If you ask any individual living in these islands – who is old sufficient – they will tell you happily that they do not forget ‘Steptoe and Son’ and ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’. Most people, of that age, will even be capable to quote a few lines from one of the episodes. Ask them in regards to Tony Hancock, the blood donor, and they will say, Oh yes, I remember, he said: ‘A pint? That’s closely an armful, isn’t it?’ They will be capable to describe the episode he got stuck in a lift or the time he had a reunion of old Army pals. Yes, they will say, chuckling merrily, it was all good stuff, I do not forget it well. Then, ask them this question: What did Hancock do for a living? It might seem irrelevant. After all, it was a comedy show. It wasn’t meant to be realistic, or even approximate to life. Besides, everyone in Britain knew the name Tony Hancock. He was a comedian, right? Well, actually, no. When the writers were interviewed galore years ago, they were asked that very question: why had Hancock never actually been described as a comic in any of the episodes? The stories always involved him living in numerous sort of run-down suburb of London, now and then called East Cheam; in an unkempt house, from time to time in a road called ‘Railway Cuttings’; at times alone and now and again with an potpourri of friends that included Sid James, Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams, all fine comic actors. In the later series, the pals were axed, one by one, and Hancock did all the comedy on his own. (It was also one of the things he was famous for: the more famous he got, the more paranoid and solitary he became.) But what did he do? The writers smiled and said that was one of the fun things they did: they varied it from episode to episode. Most of the time he was described as an actor, but in a good deal of of the stories he was fantastically poor, unknown and struggling, while in others, he was famous, a household name, recognised in the street and being given awards for his art. The writers were effortlessly bored, they said, so they had fun with the character, and made him dissimilar from week to week. The strange thing, they said, was that no one seemed to notice. Now we could be generous and say that ‘Of course humans noticed’. They saw the variety, saw the joke, and laughed along. Unfortunately, that would be exceedingly uncommon. Think of a more recent comedy series, like ‘Friends’. One of the characters, Joey, was supposed to be an actor. For much of the earlier series, he was a engaged in a struggle actor, with the occasional bout of little parts. Later, he achieved a regular gig as ‘Dr Drake Ramore’ in a TV soap opera. But it didn’t change week by week! Over the course of a series, the reputation Chandler lost his job, was unemployed for a while and then took up an internship in advertising. Remember that? The reputation Monica was a chef and was in charge of a restaurant for a while. But not just for one week! The fact is that it is very, very strange to have a comedy series in which the main reputation changes his life as often as Hancock, while still holding back the same persona. One week he was an actor on a West Country farming radio soap opera called ‘The Bowmans’. Anyone do not forget that? It was for one week, and was never brought up again. How odd is that? It would be as altho Homer Simpson was married to Marge one week, and a single bachelor the next. We know that Homer takes time off to be an astronaut, a singer in a Barbershop quartet, and a humane cannonball, but we likewise know that he has a regular occupation in the power plant. What if the plant had a dissimilar boss each week? Would any person detect that? The plain fact is that we like to ease ourselves with the illusion that we have memories and that they all make sense. What we fail to include is the fact that anything we do not forget is a mere fraction of the whole, and that normally we choose the bit that gives us most pleasure. So, we do not forget the odd joke – possibly we may even quote a few lines from the odd Monty Python sketch – but we can’t do not forget how a great deal of lumberjacks there were. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t seem primary at the time, so doesn’t get included in the mix. But then it would be like those old wedding photos we on occasion get out and ponder over. Always there’s a question, like, ‘Who is that guy, third on the left, next to Auntie Margaret?’ We can’t do not forget his name, or if he’s even a relative. There’s a gap in our memory, but, in order to preserve our sense of worth and not to go altogether crazy, we merely gloss over that bit and pretend it isn’t there. After all, it’s only a detail, right? One of the most glaring examples of this selective memory is to do with music. Many pop pundits derive endless pleasure from permitting humans to wax lyrical regarding their favourite tunes, and then prompting them with questions like: ‘When that record, your most preciously remembered song, was in the Top Ten, what was Number One?’ They then embarrass you by quoting a lot of dross that has come and gone, and has not only slipped from your memory, but also from the collective consciousness of the nation. It’s true. Most of us look back to some Golden Age of music and quote all the great singers and songs of that era, but the only reason we may manage that is by deleting all the rubbish that was around at the time. It’s true, there never was a decade when pop and rock were all authentically wonderful; in each era there’s good and bad, so we treasure the good, (in our view), and drop the mundane. Which is all fine, except that the only way we may do that is by rewriting history and leaving out the bits we don’t like. Try it: go on the internet and look up the Top Tens of yesteryear. I guarantee you will be embarrassed to see, just like a diamond amidst the stones, your most precious memory flanked by stuff you would rather forget. That’s what we do: we make ourselves feel better by failing to do not forget the details. We select, we edit, we rearrange, and we construct. Our memories are not filing cabinets that comprise all the files: they are scrapbooks of cuttings and family snaps, chosen and arranged to please us. But you know how you do that, don’t you? You commence with a pile of photos and you end up with a selection. The rest? They’re ruthlessly thrown away. Like not wanted details. |
