ALAN SIMPSON

(27 November 1929 - 8 February 2017)

From 1957, the scriptwriting partnership of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson produced some of the best comedy programmes on radio and television for some sixty years. They met in hospital when they were both suffering from tuberculosis and started writing for the hospital radio station. They began scripting for BBC radio in 1951 for Derek Roy’s show Happy-Go-Lucky, then with Eric Sykes contributed to Frankie Howerd’s Fine Goings On and eventually Hancock’s Half Hour (1954-59) which transferred to BBC Television from 1956 to 1961. They had also written for Bernard Braden and contributed ten one-off scripts for BBC TVs Comedy Playhouse, one of which, The Offer, about two rag and bone men, became Steptoe and Son (1962-74). The duo wrote Citizen James, a series for Sid James, and other TV shows for Frankie Howerd, Ken Dodd and Leslie Phillips, plus television movies and an adaptation of Clochemerle. In the cinema they were not that successful. Apart from movie spin-offs of Steptoe and Son and Up the Chastity Belt for Frankie Howerd, there was The Rebel (1961) written when Hancock was at the height of his fame, The Bargee (1964), with Harry H. Corbett, The Spy With a Cold Nose (1966), the film version of Joe Orton’s Loot (1970) and a short called Le Petomane (1979) with Leonard Rossiter as the Frenchman with a music hall farting act. However, Alan Simpson and Ray Galton were essentially TV writers and in their heyday they were the best there was and their material still stands up today. They both received the OBE in 2000 and were awarded a Bafta Fellowship in 2016. Ray Galton himself died 5 October 2018 following a long illness associated with dementia.

MICHAEL DARVELL