Comedy scribe set ‘gold standard’

SCREENWRITER Ray Galton (88) cowrote the landmark British comedy series Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe and Son

The Londonborn Galton was diagnosed with lifethreatening tuberculosis as a teenager.

In a Surrey sanatorium, he met another sick teen, Alan Simpson, and the pair became longterm writing partners, probably the most influential British comedy scriptwriters ever.

Manager Tessa Le Bars called them ‘‘the fathers and creators of British sitcom’’.

The revered Galton and Simpson worked together for 60 years and wrote Hancock’s Half Hour for popular postwar comedian Tony Hancock, which featured first on BBC radio and then made the move to television in the mid to late1950s.

Their ability to write convincing, downtoearth, dialogue made Hancock, of 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, the ‘‘quintessential disappointed British antihero of the postwar years’’, said an obituary in The Guardian this week.

Arguably their biggest hit was Steptoe and Son, a longrunning sitcom about fatherandson ragandbone men in London’s Shepherds Bush, which ran for eight series between 1962 and 1974.

According to The Guardian, British comedian and author David Walliams tweeted: ‘‘What an incredible body of work Ray Galton has left us with. Some of the greatest TV comedy ever written, Hancock and Steptoe & Son are still the gold standard of sitcoms.’’

In 2016, Galton and Simpson were awarded a Bafta fellowship. In his acceptance speech, Galton referred to some of their bestknown work, including Hancock’s most wellknown episodes, ‘‘The Blood Donor’’ and ‘‘The Radio Ham’’,

The Guardian said.

‘‘We are happy and honoured to accept this award on behalf of all the blood donors, test pilots, radio hams and ragandbone men of the 20th century, without whom we would probably be out of a job.’’

Steptoe and Son starred Harry H. Corbett as son Harold, with similar pretensions to the Hancock character, while his grubby father, Albert, was played by Wilfrid Brambell.

Producer Norman Lear adapted it into the United States sitcom Sanford and Son.

Galton was born in Paddington, and died there, too, last Saturday, after what his family said was a ‘‘long and heartbreaking battle with dementia’’.