Who is Tony Hancock? Message Board Links Merchandise Desktop Theme Frames No Frames

Welcome to a web site dedicated to providing you original quality Desktop Themes for you to download and enjoy. With over 25 themes to choose from be sure you visit the rest of the website before leaving - click on Frames or No Frames to access the main menu. This page is my tribute to arguably Britain's greatest post-war comedian - Tony Hancock.

Tony Hancock "the lad himself" was a comic genius. His radio and TV shows of the 50's and 60's are held as comedy classics by devoted fans 30 years after his tragic death. But who was Tony Hancock? Born in Birmingham in 1924, Tony joined the Ralph Reader Gang Show and entertained the troops until the end of the second world war. His Radio career took off following an appearance in an early radio show called Educating Archie where he played opposite a wooden dummy and its ventriloquist. In 1954 he got his own Radio Show - Hancock's Half Hour. Written by comedy script writing partnership Alan Simpson and Ray Galton, it featured such comic talents as Sid James, Hugh Lloyd and Kenneth Williams. In 1956 the show moved to BBC television while continuing on radio. The show was extremely successful and it ran for many years until 1961 when it changed it's name to just Hancock. The public were simply not interested in this new Hancock, and he slowly sank into drink and despair, a situation made worse by injuries sustained in a car accident. It is ironic therefore that his best known work, The Blood Donor episode of his new series Hancock was filmed while Hancock was still suffering from bouts of amnesia. Never keen to memorize his lines, for this episode he was forced to use cue cards and yet it is acclaimed by many as his finest half-hour!

As the viewing public become more and more demanding the popularity of the show began to wane. After a disastrous starring role in a film called The Rebel, Tony Hancock returned to his proven format in 1963 when he made a new series of Hancock, this time for ATV, a regional independent television network - it was generally not a success. It failed to secure a place in the top 20 rating and Galton and Simpson had, by this time, found a new flag ship in Steptoe and Son which was riding high in the charts at number 3. In 1966 and 1967 Hancock made two more series of Hancock, this time for another British independent television network, ABC. The shows were set in a night-club and interwove sketches with guest performers introduced by Hancock, again they were not a success. In 1968, in an attempt at a comeback using his tried and tested Hancock format, Tony Hancock made his way out to Australia to film new versions of his classic work. Things did not go so well though and soon after arriving in Australia, Tony Hancock took his own life.

Passionate about comedy? - add a comment to the Tony Hancock Forum at ezboard.com

The Tony Hancock Forum

Links to other Tony Hancock Web Sites

Here are the links I have found to other web-sites which contain information, episode guides, pictures and sounds relating to this cult classic.

Visit the Tony Hancock Appreciation Society web site.

Visit Katherine Dean's The Lad Himself Web Guide to Tony Hancock right here at geocities.

Visit the Suite101 Tony Hancock article (British Comedy database).

Visit Saga web magazine and read their article on Tony Hancock.

Visit the original Tony Hancock website - spreading the word since 1995.

buy Hancock Videos on-line (3 episodes per video).....

The Hancock Desktop Theme is my tribute to this classic BBC Television series from the 60's. This Desktop Theme features themed start-up and shutdown screens, 800x600 hi-colour desktop wallpaper, animated cursors and new desktop icons. Also included are new windows sounds selected from a number of popular Hancock episode’s including the Blood Donor to accompany the windows events. I have also included a full featured screensaver made with Screen Saver Studio. Full installation instructions are provided and the whole theme is available in a convenient zip file to download.

If you don't have a copy of Microsoft Plus! help is at hand in the form of Desktop Themes, a shareware desktop theme manager published by Jonathan Potter at Left Side Software. Click on to get your copy.

The following thumbnails will give you an idea of the screens used in this theme.

Click here to download the Tony Hancock Tribute Desktop Theme Version 1.0 (1.15Mb)

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You can now use GetRight.Com's downloading Utility GetRight for Java to download this desktop theme. Click on the GetRight Download button that follows to download the Tony Hancock Desktop Theme using GetRight for Java instead of your browsers usual download tool. Check out my Download Problems page to find out how to use this facility and for more great tips on how you can improve your downloads using Net Vampire.

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