One of the godfathers of sitcoms
Alan Simpson
Comedy script-writer
BORN NOVEMBER 27, 1929 - DIED FEBRUARY 8, 2017 AGED 87
BETWEEN them they have provided a lifetime of laughs thanks to Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe And Son. Yet writer Alan Simpson, who died this week after a long battle with lung disease, and his writing partner Ray Galton would never have had their glittering career had they not contracted tuberculosis as teenagers.
The pair, who also wrote TV, film and theatre scripts for many stars including Peter Sellers and Leonard Rossiter, met while recovering from the disease at Milford Sanatorium in Surrey in 1948.
“There is no way we would have dreamt of being writers if we hadn’t met there,” Simpson once said.
“We were there from the ages of 17 to 20 while everyone else was doing their National Service.
“During our stay we suggested the hospital’s radio station do a comedy show. ‘Well, you do it,’ they said.
“So we sat down and came up with an idea called ‘Have You Ever Wondered...’, situations such as what would happen if the doctors became patients and the patients became doctors but we dried up after four sketches.”
Before the pair left Milford they wrote a letter to Frank Muir and Denis Norden, then the biggest comedy writers in the country, asking if they could work for them as office boys.
“But we got a charming letter back giving us the elbow,” Simpson said, “but they suggested that we write a sketch and send it to the BBC. We didn’t do anything until a year later and sent them a script about a pirate called Captain Henry Morgan.
“Days later we got a letter saying the BBC was ‘highly amused’ and to come in for a meeting. Within four years we were working with Tony Hancock. We couldn’t believe it.”
While their early work with Hancock pioneered what became known as situation comedy, their biggest TV hit Steptoe And Son, about father-and-son rag and bone team Harold and Albert, ran for 12 years from 1962 to 1974, reaching an audience of 28million.
“Some of my fondest memories are from the Hancock days,” Simpson said in 2009.
“He was a dream to work with, one of those rare performers who could read something perfectly first time.
“He had his problems and was never a great party man but he was funny.”
Born in Brixton, south London, Simpson attended Mitcham County Grammar School for Boys before working as a shipping clerk. He was 17 when he contracted TB. Galton recalls: “He was the biggest bloke I’d ever seen.”
Standing at 6ft 4ins and nearly as broad, Simpson was later described by Spike Milligan as “he who blocks out the sun”.
Both teenagers were seriously ill, Simpson received the last rites while Galton was given just weeks to live.
Despite the dire prognosis, both made a full recovery and cemented their friendship over a shared love of American humorists such as Damon Runyon and BBC radio comedy programmes including Take It From Here and The Goon Show.
They first came to prominence in 1954 when Hancock’s Half Hour was born.
Often credited as the first true radio sitcom it ran until 1956 before transferring to television.
The TV series came to an end in 1961 when the show’s star, who was becoming increasingly self-critical and drinking heavily, sacked Galton and Simpson. Unwilling to lose them the BBC commissioned them to write scripts for Comedy Playhouse, a series of one-off sitcoms.
In 1978 Simpson stopped writing to pursue other business interests but the pair continued to meet every Monday at Galton’s home in Hampton, west London, to drink coffee in his living room and discuss the best of today’s comedians.
They were both awarded OBEs in 2000 and received the Bafta Fellowship award last year.