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Hancock's
Last Half Hour by Heathcote
Williams
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The Times review
'The
title tells all. Barricaded in his Sydney hotel bedroom with plentiful
stocks
of vodka, the lad from East Cheam casts a bleary eye over his wrecked
career and marriages before swallowing the last handful of pills. Hancock's
Last Half Hour is written by someone who knows and loves his
subject, and has the technical skill to cut across chronological
time and re-create Hancock entire, through the inflections, attitudes
and verbal shorthand which Hancock gave to English speech. Hancock's
battered mind jumps dazzlingly about, through the wilderness of
comic
theory including Freud ("How would he go down second house at the Glasgow
Empire?") teasing the reader, confiding to a moose head on the wall,
and sending up disconsolate prayers to Bertrand Russell, even though,
as he finally observes, "There's not a clown in the sky."' |
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Irving
Wardle, The Times
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Heathcote
Williams is the author of AC/DC, The Speakers, a documentary novel
about four Hyde Park orators, The Local Stigmatic, The Truth
Dentist,
and the orgiastic opera, The Supernatural Family; and as a partner
in the Ruff Tuff Creem Puff Estate Agency, which provides free accommodation
for the homeless, he's been involved in various enlightened crimes,
such as opening up the Palm Court Hotel for the battered wives and
children of Chiswick Women's Aid; the Albion Free State Meat Roxy,
a former bingo hall in the Ladbroke Archipelago, where he organised
free days and nights of nameless wildness.
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A volume
of his essays, manifestoes and graffiti on God, Sex, Death, squatting,
Beasts Liberation, Plant Lib., suing the Chief Constable of Windsor,
etc. to be entitled Severe Joy is to appear soon.
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Mr. Williams is currently editing The Fanatic, a paper of passion, with Richard Adams and John Michell. |
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The first performance of Hancock's Last Half Hour was at The Ambiance Lunch-Hour Theatre Club at The Almost Free Theatre, London W1, on the 18th April 1977, with: Henry Woolf, as The Lad Himself. An Inter-Action Production designed by Norman Coates and directed by Peter Southcott. Approximate playing time: 65 minutes. |
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The author has made free use of all available texts, including Hancock's own words, the preface by Peter Black to Hancock's Half Hour, an anthology of scripts, Woburn Press, 1974, The Entertainers - Tony Hancock by Philip Oakes, Woburn Press, 1975, and Hancock by David Nathan and Freddie Hancock, William Kimber, 1969, Coronet Books, 1975, and acknowledges the help of Mal Dean, Dave Jarrett, Roy Martin, Tuli Kupferburg, Diana Senior, Peter Southcott, and Henry Woolf. |
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First
published in book form by Polytantric Press © Heathcote Williams
1977. Designed and illustration by Richard Adams. All communications
regarding the performance of this text should be addressed to Actac,
16 Cadogan Lane, London SW1. ISBN 0 905150 05 8 (Paperback) ISBN
0 905150 04 X (Hardback). Printed in Great Britain by Latimer Trend & Company
Ltd Plymouth.
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There were two publications of this particular book. They're both dated 1977, and are as follows:
Both these books are as rare as they come. Expect to pay up to £65.00 (and maybe beyond), for a fine signed copy of the hardback. If you find a copy for a lot less, then consider yourself very lucky. Happy hunting, if you do try to find a copy. |
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