Edinburgh Fringe to hear gags missing for 50 years

Previously lost Tony Hancock scripts are to be performed at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe for the first time in more than 50 years.

Kevin McNally – who plays Joshamee Gibbs in the Pirates Of The Caribbean Films – will play ‘the lad himself’ in the Ray Galton and Alan Simpson scripts.

The missing episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour have been resurrected thanks to actor Neil Pearson, who unearthed the scripts of shows wiped from the BBC archives.

Last year his discoveries led to the BBC re-recording five Hancock scripts, again with McNally in the lead role, for Radio 4. And he has revealed that a second series is in the pipeline, to air this autumn.

However the four scripts being staged at the Assembly Rooms this August have not previously been performed anywhere.

Pearson, who came by the scripts in his other career as an antiquarian book dealer, will be directing the Edinburgh shows, today’s Scotland on Sunday reports.

Twenty of the 103 Hancock’s Half Hour radio shows are missing - including three in which an absent Hancock was replaced by Harry Secombe – and about half the TV series.

Published: 5 Apr 2015