Tony Hancock: The Definitive Biography. John Fisher
a polished copper geyser.’ When Dick asked Tony where he slept, he pointed to a pile of newspapers in the corner, explaining: ‘Fresh sheets every day, matey! And I put a coat over myself for warmth.’ What little food he could afford he would eat standing up at the mantelpiece.
All the while Rounce wore her fingers to the bone attempting to fill the long gaps that yawned in her client’s calendar between the occasional broadcasts and the seasonal shows. In this regard pantomime proved a godsend, even if her client regarded the format with the nausea of a spoilt child being forced to swallow its medicine. No sooner had Phyl taken over his career than Hancock was reprising his role as an Ugly Sister in Frank Shelley’s version of Cinderella at the Dolphin Theatre, Brighton, for the Christmas of 1948. The season ran for a mere two weeks. At the same time Sid Field was playing in his out-of-town tour of Harvey at the resort’s more prestigious Theatre Royal. He might have drawn some consolation from the fact that from an early stage Field too had hated the festive genre, the perfectionist within him complaining that he was constantly distracted by the hum and murmur of the children in the audience. In 1962 Tony noted that the nearest he came to meeting his hero was when he found himself sitting near him one day in the pub behind the Theatre Royal, Brighton: ‘But even if my name had meant anything to him I wouldn’t have had the heart to introduce myself. He looked too miserable. I remember he wore a jockey cap, a ghastly black and white affair. I can’t think why unless he needed something to cheer him up. He was just breaking in “Harvey” and the strain of wondering whether the public would accept the transition after those years on the halls was written all over his face.’
At the end of 1949 Cinderella beckoned again, but this time in a new production with Hancock as the comedy lead, Buttons, at the Royal Artillery Theatre, Woolwich. He would never don skirts, which he abhorred, for the Christmas institution again. The review in the Stage was impressive: ‘Tony Hancock shows himself the master of subtly differing styles of humour and his affection for Cinderella carries a conviction comparatively rare in pantomime.’ The words must have settled on his stomach like cold Christmas pudding. Dennis Main Wilson, fast becoming a friend Hancock could trust, mustered together a bunch of mates to provide him with moral support. Actress Miriam Karlin and comedian Leslie Randall were two who dragged themselves along with him to the eastern extremities of the capital to cheer Tony on his way. The nadir for Hancock came when he had to coax an audience of children into singing from a song-sheet ‘Chick-chick-chick-chick-chicken, lay a little egg for me.’ At this performance, the voice of his friends drowned out the juvenile chorus. By the end of the exercise, Main Wilson and his cohorts had been asked to leave the theatre.
The following Christmas he was able to venture into other areas of the story book, cast as Jolly Jenkins, the silly-billy, well-meaning page to the Baron in the tale of Red Riding Hood, with a young Julie Andrews in the title role at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham. This engagement showed a considerable advance in status within the profession, the venue being one of the country’s prime provincial dates. The show also carried the prestige of being a Tom Arnold production: Arnold had arguably the foremost reputation as a producer of spectacular entertainment for the provinces at this time. Tony owed everything to the power of the radio exposure Rounce had been building for him, principally through his bookings on Variety Bandbox. The run of the panto extended from 23 December until 10 March 1951 and must have seemed like a prison sentence. Hancock endured personal degradation every time he had to sing ‘Every little piggy has a curly tail …’. He recalled, ‘There followed five minutes of mutual dislike. Every night I felt like walking up to the footlights and having it out with them: “You don’t like it and neither do I, believe me. It’s too long anyway. Why don’t we call it off and go home?”’ Dame Julie recalls, ‘I knew him a little and liked him … In his hilarious sketches life was always tough and he would stand, gazing out at the audience with thick-fingered, “wet fish” hands at his side, trying to understand the trials and tribulations that befell him.’
Hancock would play pantomime only once more, when he returned to Nottingham for Tom Arnold as Buttons for Christmas 1953. By this time he was a recognisable name with full-blown star billing. During the run he received a letter from Pat Newman from the BBC, who with tongue in cheek drew to Tony’s attention a criticism from an acquaintance who lived there, namely that he was acting in the manner that a Nottingham panto was beneath him. Newman quickly removed the sting by adding that he would almost certainly prefer his performance if this were the case. Tony replied, ‘Regarding the remarks from the young lady from Nottingham, I found them a little hard to take after casting fourteen stone of exhausted Hancock twice a day to the ground solely for the pleasure of the children … best wishes, head down, left arm stiff, foot pointing to the sky, Tony.’ Hancock was not necessarily speaking metaphorically. He made his entrance in the ballroom scene by sliding down a flight of stairs from the wings to the centre of the stage on his heels, pausing at an intermediate landing, and then sliding down another flight to arrive at the front of the stage. Main Wilson paid him a visit during the season and was immediately impressed by the feat, whereupon Hancock promised to take the flights at a single run the following night. On the first part of his descent, however, he slipped, fell the rest of the way and brought the house down, together – literally – with part of the scenery and two chandeliers. ‘The incident provoked gales of laughter from the audience,’ said Dennis, ‘but Tony worried about it.’ During this visit Main Wilson had his realisation that Hancock could raise laughs merely with a look confirmed. George Bolton, a raucous variety comic of the old school, played the Baroness. One night, when Dennis was in the wings, he overheard Bolton say to Hancock just before the kitchen scene, ‘We’ll do the teapots.’ He was referring to an old piece of pantomime business of which the uninitiated Hancock had never heard. But there was no time to learn now and for the next few minutes Bolton was forced to go through a solo version of the routine, while Buttons stood by with a look of bewilderment and resignation that gained most of the laughs.
A sense of Hancock in pantomime can be gained from a radio episode where Galton and Simpson, prompted no doubt by their star’s anguished memories of his experiences, decided to parody Cinderella. This time Tony himself, prevented by Bill and Sid from attending the National Film Board Ball, is forced to stay behind in the kitchen coping with the drudgery of housework: ‘Here I am, a pathetic-looking figure – huddled round an empty grate – no friends – no one to care for me – miserable and lonely – the sort of thing Norman Wisdom dreams about!’ At other times the nostalgia is more specific. As he is driven around Moravia in an open-top car in a not dissimilar pastiche of The Student Prince, he rhapsodises, ‘Ah, this is the life – I never got treated like this when I played Buttons at Woolwich.’ On a television episode, possibly with the Stage review for Woolwich in mind, he chides Sid for not taking his talents seriously: ‘You never did see me in pantomime, did you? My rendition of Buttons had a depth of meaning that astounded everybody who saw it … the whole performance in the best tradition of the Russian theatre and Stanislavski.’ When Sid suggests he didn’t get any giggles, Hancock adds, ‘I didn’t try to get any giggles. I saw the part as a tragedy.’ He was able to get his own back on what he saw as the whole demeaning tradition when towards the end of 1957 he was invited to participate in Pantomania, a Christmas Night television spectacular with a high ‘works outing’ element attached, as the likes of Eamonn Andrews, Huw Wheldon, Cliff Michelmore and Sylvia Peters stepped out of their presenting roles to let their hair down in a burlesque romp loosely based on Babes in the Wood. All goes well until Hancock as Aladdin wanders into Sherwood Forest and the deconstruction – helped by Sid as a disobliging genie – begins.
Returning to his earlier career, one finds Hancock’s slow climb to the top characterised by sporadic dates that came to bear the doomed hallmark of his emerging comic persona. There was the cabaret booking at the Victoria Hotel, Sidmouth, in November 1949, when he arrived a full week early. With two pennies and a halfpenny in his pocket – enough for a life-saving cup of tea at Micheldever Station and no more – he returned to London on the slow train, only to have to go back a week later: ‘I think I made a net loss of about five quid on the deal.’ There was the cabaret for the Election Night Ball at Claridge’s on 23 February the following year. As Hancock proceeded with his act, the toastmaster, who had not endeared himself by introducing him as ‘Mr Hitchcock’, would