In 1946, TV viewers in the UK were introduced to an entirely new concept of comedic entertainment in the form of Pinwright's Progress, a now all-but-forgotten piece of uninspiring dirge that ran for just one series, stretched out over 10 episodes.
Though something of a disappointment compared with what was to come, the programme featured true-to-life characters in believable, everyday situations - presented with a humourous slant - and can therefore lay claim to being the world's first television sitcom.
Hancock's Half Hour: The Genre's First Big Hit
Ten years later in 1956, following two successful years on radio, the first truly great TV situation comedy - the template by which all future efforts would be judged - began its groundbreaking five-year ascent into the history books and the popular format has never looked back.
Hancock's Half Hour remains an inspired work of genius, from two writers at the absolute peak of their powers, and the everyday trials and tribulations of its pompous, overly-confident anti-hero - the original "lovable loser" - have continued to influence generations of comedians all over the world.
The writers behind Hancock's Half Hour were Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, two former tuberculosis sufferers - and later the brains behind another bona-fide classic, Steptoe & Son - who had met six years previously while attempting to combat the killer disease at a sanatorium in Surrey.
The show starred the late, great Tony Hancock as a poor, down-on-his-luck "resting" actor and comedian, with hilarious delusions of grandeur - essentially the real Tony Hancock playing an exaggerated version of himself - living at the decidedly unglamourous residence of 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam.
Unfortunately, differences of opinion between the writers and Hancock - a situation not helped by the troubled star's excessive drinking - brought about the demise of Hancock's Half Hour, following its seventh TV series, in 1961.
Tony Hancock: "A Bloody Good Actor and a Nice Man"
"The great thing about Hancock," remembers Ray Galton, "was that he said, 'I’m the actor, I’ll act, you’re the writers, write' and we kept to that and so did he. He never once made suggestions or anything like that, so it was great and we got on amazingly well. It would have been hard not to really."
"We did over 160 Half Hours with him, a film and a stage review," adds Ray's writing partner, Alan Simpson.
Ray Galton (RG): "We were lucky that we had a guy there that was a good man and nice. Sometimes, the producer would say to him, when we sent the script in, 'Hello Tony, please read the script and let me know what you think'. Immediately Hancock thought, 'Hello, what’s this...?'"
Alan Simpson (AS): "What’s wrong with it?"
RG: "Yeah, what’s wrong with it?! Naturally, he did turn one or two scripts down - or three or four – but it was really the producer telling him that he didn’t think it was all that up to standard. Some of it we re-wrote. Spike Milligan said, 'You’re not going to re-write are you? Tell them to piss off!'"
AS: “'Tell them to do it themselves'!”
RG: "But we did rewrite…"
AS: "The great thing about Tony, though, was he was such a great performer…"
RG: "He was and he could read a script first time and get it right, absolutely right – dead on. Strangely enough, sometimes he’d say, 'That got a laugh. Why did it get a laugh?' and we’d say, 'Well, it’s funny' and we said, 'If you didn’t think it was funny, why did you say it without asking?!' But, no, he was ideal for us to write for because he was a bloody good actor and a nice man."
A new biography on Galton & Simpson, entitled The Masters of Sitcom: From Hancock to Steptoe, is available now from Amazon.
Adrian Peel - Adrian is an English freelance writer and journalist currently living in Mexico. Over the past eight years, he has had articles, features ...
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