RIP Ray Galton

..and why not?
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Rayge
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RIP Ray Galton

Postby Rayge » 06 Oct 2018, 18:49

Won't mean much to anyone who wasn't British and more or less sentient in the 1950s and 1960s, but, along with his writing partner Alan Simpson, who died last year, he was responsible for so much hilarity in my childhood and youth that I kind of worshiped him, up there with Willans and Searle, the Grossmith Brothers, and Clement and LaFrenais in the pantheon of great comedy writing duos (and in the case of Searle and one of the Grossmiths, drawing).
I can hardly lament his early passing, seeing as he was 88 and had been suffering from dementia, but I still feel it keenly as his work was so much part of my childhood. I think that's everyone associated with Hancock gone now. Those radio half-hours, along with The Goon Show (likewise all deceased), shaped and nurtured my sense of humour for life.

RIP to the whole glorious gang of them.

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naughty boy
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Re: RIP Ray Galton

Postby naughty boy » 06 Oct 2018, 18:53

Well said.

Reading that news made me feel terribly sad. They were wonderful men, Galton and Simpson.

RIP
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Darkness_Fish
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Re: RIP Ray Galton

Postby Darkness_Fish » 06 Oct 2018, 21:27

Indeed, a pioneer of radio and TV comedy, and one who reached a grand old age and had a fair bit of success in his heyday, so it feels like there should be a celebration of his memory than a moments silence. I must admit, I never really found Steptoe particularly funny, but Hancock's Half Hour fully deserves all its plaudits. While the performances of Hancock are a big slice of it, the creation of the pompous self-regarding character who suffers regularly by his own hand is perfectly drawn. They were well ahead of the game in the framing of some of the episodes, too, the parody of The Archers and the less-well regarded (but still chaotically magnificent) "Ericson the Good" surely paved the way for the likes of the Acorn Antiques sketches, a good few decades earlier.
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.


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