London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Sep 09, 2025

Hancock's Half Hour reminds us what once united Britain: laughing at each other

Hancock's Half Hour reminds us what once united Britain: laughing at each other

In the 1950s radio comedy, implacable differences of opinion just create a society full of people it’s enjoyable to laugh at
Plenty of people will remember Hancock’s Half Hour from when it first aired in 1954, and then there is the generation who know it because it reminds us of our dads. As far as I know, the line stops there: at least, I’ve never been able to curate this comedy gold in such a way as to endear it to my own offspring. I’m talking about the radio version, of course, which is better, because radio is.

When it launched, Hancock had a silly, romping spirit, in the fashion of It’s That Man Again or The Goon Show. The postwar years were very gentle on themselves, comedically speaking; it often felt as though they couldn’t cope with much edge, which after the mid-century carnage is fair enough.

By the show’s end in 1961, it was a completely different experience, a rumination on the human condition. I raise all this not to keep the flame alive at a sentimental time of year – well, that too – but because we have, for at least the past five years, and intensely during 2020, come to think of ourselves as a nation experiencing a sudden breach: always on the brink of a fresh culture war, inexplicably separated in our sensibilities and beliefs by chasms that cannot possibly be overcome by goodwill alone. And the more I listen to Hancock’s Half Hour, the more I think, that’s completely wrong. We’ve always been like this.

May I draw your attention to a particular episode, Fred’s Pie Stall. Fred, the pie man, has been asked to clear out of the market, so it can be modernised. There’s a grand subtext about the encroachment of modernity via commerce – nobody would allow ancient traditions and pie men to be cast aside if it weren’t for pesky shoppers and their filthy lucre – which is left unsaid, but plenty of stuff isn’t.

Before Tony Hancock and Sid James even touch on what they hate about cappuccino and kebabs, they take a detour via cleanliness – “All this hygiene stuff may be very nice but it takes all the charm out of things”.

This is actually the core case of the anti-mask brigade: the ones who say it’s an infringement of their civil liberties are pilfering the line from their US counterparts. Most of them just find it charmless: life is when you can see one another’s faces. Anything else is less like life.

Hancock hates young people, whose crime is their youth plus intellectualism (“Sitting there with their green fingernails and their omnibus edition of Ibsen”). I mean, hear the timeless gentleman out: he could be talking about snowflakes. He could be Nigel Farage. He could have a column in Spiked, or a slot on Rupert Murdoch’s new Fox-lite current affairs channel. Except it wouldn’t be funny, but park that for a minute.

They want to save Fred’s pie stall because it’s the last bastion of Britishness in a sea of Omelette Valenciana, “in Cheam high street, mark you!” . It turns out, because of course it does, that Fred is actually Italian, a detail they digest effortlessly. Anyone who flogs meat pies is British enough for them, wherever he was born.

The xenophobia isn’t about nationality any more than the generation war is about the young. It’s just about change. Things used to be the same, and now they’re different, and nobody asked Hancock, or any of his friends.

This is about the richest imaginable comic tradition, the grumpy man – who doesn’t even have to be male – who doesn’t like change, whether it’s a mass social movement or someone going out for an unscheduled walk. Its leitmotif is things costing more than they used to, but that’s not really about money, either.

The other day my uncle listed the price of a pint of Betty Stogs in every pub in Lewisham, and then meticulously compared that to what it used to be, pausing regularly to ensure accuracy. That took quite a long time.

Anyway, Hancock saves Fred’s pie stall (via some other joltingly recognisable themes: petty bureaucracy and an out-of-touch elite). Rapid gentrification ensues since the rich, once they’ve discovered saveloys, can’t stay away, and Hancock defects to the continental cafe he derided five minutes before, on the wings of the epiphany that what is ravioli, anyway, if not a plate of little meat pies?

In Hancock’s Half Hour everyone is ridiculous – the people who hate change and the ones who seek it, in this playful mudbath of piss-take and self-parody. Implacable differences of opinion and outlook weren’t a cause for mournful patience and hand-wringing toleration: they were the price you paid for a society full of people it was enjoyable to laugh at.

We are not in the grip of unprecedented or enigmatic division: the only mystery is when we lost our sense of humour about it. Figuring that out will throw up some difficult answers, but at least we’ll have started with the right question.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Court Staff Cover Up Banksy Image of Judge Beating a Protester
Social Media Access Curtailed in Turkey After CHP Calls for Rallies Following Police Blockade of Istanbul Headquarters
Nayib Bukele Points Out Belgian Hypocrisy as Brussels Considers Sending Army into the Streets
Elon Musk Poised to Become First Trillionaire Under Ambitious Tesla Pay Plan
France, at an Impasse, Heads Toward Another Government Collapse
Burning the Minister’s House Helped Protesters to Win Justice: Prabowo Fires Finance Minister in Wake of Indonesia Protests
Brazil Braces for Fallout from Bolsonaro Trial by corrupted judge
The Country That Got Too Rich? Public Spending Dominates Norway Election
Nearly 40 Years Later: Nike Changes the Legendary Slogan Just Do It
Generations Born After 1939 Unlikely to Reach Age One Hundred, New Study Finds
End to a four-year manhunt in New Zealand: the father who abducted his children to the forests was killed, the three siblings were found
Germany Suspends Debt Rules, Funnels €500 Billion Toward Military and Proxy War Strategy
EU Prepares for War
BMW Eyes Growth in China with New All‑Electric Neue Klasse Lineup
Trump Threatens Retaliatory Tariffs After EU Imposes €2.95 Billion Fine on Google
Tesla Board Proposes Unprecedented One-Trillion-Dollar Performance Package for Elon Musk
US Justice Department Launches Criminal Mortgage-Fraud Probe into Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook
Escalating Drug Trafficking and Violence in Latin America: A Growing Crisis
US and Taiwanese Defence Officials Held Secret Talks in Alaska
Report: Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission in North Korea Ordered by Trump in 2019 Ended in Failure
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Florida Murder Case: The Adelson Family, the Killing of Dan Markel, and the Trial of Donna Adelson
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Big Tech Executives Laud Trump at White House Dinner, Unveil Massive U.S. Investments
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
‘Looks Like a Wig’: Online Users Express Concern Over Kate Middleton
Brand-New $1 Million Yacht Sinks Just Fifteen Minutes After Maiden Launch in Turkey
Here’s What the FBI Seized in John Bolton Raid — and the Legal Risks He Faces
Florida’s Vaccine Revolution: DeSantis Declares War on Mandates
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
"The Situation Has Never Been This Bad": The Fall of PepsiCo
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
The Fashion Designer Who Became an Italian Symbol: Giorgio Armani Has Died at 91
Putin Celebrates ‘Unprecedentedly High’ Ties with China as Gazprom Seals Power of Siberia-2 Deal
China Unveils New Weapons in Grand Military Parade as Xi Hosts Putin and Kim
Queen Camilla’s Teenage Courage: Fended Off Attempted Assault on London Train, New Biography Reveals
Scottish Brothers Set Record in Historic Pacific Row
Rapper Cardi B Cleared of Liability in Los Angeles Civil Assault Trial
Google Avoids Break-Up in U.S. Antitrust Case as Stocks Rise
Couple celebrates 80th wedding anniversary at assisted living facility in Lancaster
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
The White House on LinkedIn Has Changed Their Profile Picture to Donald Trump
"Insulted the Prophet Muhammad": Woman Burned Alive by Angry Mob in Niger State, Nigeria
Trump Responds to Death Rumors – Announces 'Missile City'
Court of Appeal Allows Asylum Seekers to Remain at Essex Hotel Amid Local Tax Boycott Threats
Germany in Turmoil: Ukrainian Teenage Girl Pushed to Death by Illegal Iraqi Migrant
United Krack down on human rights: Graham Linehan Arrested at Heathrow Over Three X Posts, Hospitalised, Released on Bail with Posting Ban
Asian and Middle Eastern Investors Avoid US Markets
Ray Dalio Warns of US Shift to Autocracy
×