Very Nearly an Armful - A Tony Hancock Podcast

In this episode, Tim, James, Jon and Martin discuss the episode The Reunion Party from the excellent sixth television series. As this episode takes place 15 years after the Second World War ended, the four fans consider the likelihood that the episode reflected real life events with similar reunions happening between former pals who hadn’t seen each other for years at the time.  They also con...

In this episode, Tim, James, Jon and Martin consider the merit of the radio episode The American’s Hit Town from the brilliant fifth series. The four fans look at significant role that Hattie Jacques has in this episode, look at the three very different roles that Kenneth Williams plays brilliantly, all with very different voices, and consider whether there was any ‘real-life’ event that influence...

Very Nearly an Armful makes a welcome return for a second series.  In this episode Martin, Tim, James and Jon discuss the well known television episode The Missing Page as well as the later re-recording of the same episode which was released on vinyl. The four fans assess the merits of the two versions of this episode, consider whether Hancock’s mime sequence is one of the best moments in all...

In this teaser episode for the second series, Martin, Jon, James and Tim discuss all things Hancock in extra bits that didn’t make the final edit in series one. The four fans talk about radio episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour, “The First Night Party” and “The 13th of the Series” and revisit the infamous screeching woman before contemplating a pint of Horses Collar. We hear a clip of Bill Kerr speaki...

In this final episode of the first series, Martin, Tim and Jon talk about Tony’s infamous live episode There’s An Airfield At The Bottom of the Garden where the set didn’t quite perform as expected! The four fans discuss how the issues with the set led to changes to how Hancock’s Half Hour was broadcast with the gradual move to recorded episodes, consider in detail how the BBC used Ampex quadruple...

In this episode Martin, Tim and Jon talk about how the audio soundtracks from two lost television episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour were discovered on reel to reel tape in 2016. Neither of the episodes had been broadcast since they were repeated in 1959 so this was a brilliant discovery. The four fans talk about The Horror Serial, which was a pastiche of Quatermass and the Pit, and consider in detai...

n this episode Martin, Tim and Jon chat about the impact of the introduction of the new medium of television in the 1950s, consider the impact of the launch of ITV, and wax lyrical about the adverts of the time and how they were rudely interrupted by the programmes. The four fans talk about the radio episodes The Television Set and The Impersonator and look at the television episode The Set That F...

In this episode, Martin, Tim, Jon and James natter on about Hancock’s first major film, The Rebel. Celebrating its 60th anniversary and recently digitally remastered for DVD and Blu-ray, the film has achieved cult status with Hancock’s brilliant performance as a wannabe artist and a superb first film script by legendary writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The four Hancock fans pretend to understa...

We chat about our week including finds for the THAS archives; photo’s of Tony playing Cricket and an original script for an episode of HHH which has been offered to us. In Hancock news, Martin discusses the donation from the estate of the late Alec Bregonzi who appeared in HHH and tapes sent to the society which we check over for lost or unedited recordings of episodes. James talks about the wolf...

We start this episode with Tim having purchased a new Microphone and Martin having technical difficulties and how Galton & Simpson disliked the episode Ericson The Viking compared to the other shows due to the location filming. We mention Tony’s Spitting Image Puppet and the Hancock News of the release of ‘The Missing Hancock’s on CD in March. We talk bout our main subject of The Blood Donor a...

We all introduce ourselves and how we each got into Hancock’s Half Hour. We discuss the video releases in the 1980’s, and the exorbitant cost of videotape back in the day. We mention Paul Merton’s 1990’s recreations briefly along with Dad’s Army and repeats of shows, borrowing tapes from the old THAS VHS library, our quarterly magazine, ‘The Missing Page’. We discuss an overview of our upcoming to...