The John Freeman Interview

Freeman:

Tony Hancock. The whole of Britain knows you in your professional comic mask...and tonight we want to try and find out what lies behind the mask. Now, are you in the mood to come clean?

Hancock:

Yes indeed.

Freeman:

You know you're on your own?

Hancock:

Yes.

Freeman:

You're without your scriptwriters.

Hancock:

Yes.

Freeman:

And you'll tell us the truth?

Hancock:

I'll try to, yes.

Freeman:

Do you like talking about yourself or not?

Hancock:

Erm, yes up to a point. Particularly in relation to what I do.

Freeman:

Well in that case...

Hancock:

...in relation to comedy, yes.

Freeman:

Alright. Now, I'll ask you first of all, why are you a comic?

Hancock:

Erm, well I think I always certainly wanted to be from the first time I can remember. And erm, perhaps looking like this it was perhaps the only thing I could do. So I turned these sort of deficiencies into a, a workable thing if you understand what I mean.

Freeman:

Yes, but let's go a bit deeper than that. Do you think the world is a comic place or is it a tragic place?

Hancock:

Oh I think it consists of the two things. It's both funny and sad which seem to me to be the two basic ingredients of good comedy.

Freeman:

"basic ingredients", what is being funny? Is it mixing them together? How do you tell what is funny?

Hancock:

Well I think they exist together anyway.

Freeman:

Yes.

Hancock:

By the way we live...erm, when we attempt to be affected or pompous or...er...how can I say? Erm, we are sort of all unsure of ourselves in what we live in...erm, we try to...live in a certain way. We try to...we are, I suppose to a certain extent all affected and erm, that is both funny and sad I think.

Freeman:

So that being funny is showing how people are affected? Is that what you're trying to say?

Hancock:

I think so. I think you expose your own pomposity and other peoples' and get probably to the real truth of the way you live.

Freeman:

And so that being funny is part of the business of finding out the truth about life?

Hancock:

Entirely.

Freeman:

Yes.

Hancock:

Not to do...you can't think of it in any other way.

Interview transcription - Page 2

 

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