English comedian and writer Tony Hancock was BOTD in 1924. Born in Birmingham to a working-class family, his father was also an amateur comedian. Raised in Bournemouth, he left school at 14, making his first professional appearance as a comic in 1940, and appearing on BBC Radio the following year. During World War Two, he served in the Royal Air Force, joining Ralph Reader’s Gang Show to entertain troops, and touring through the UK after the war. In 1949, he joined the BBC’s popular Variety Bandbox radio show, leading to further appearances in Happy-Go-Lucky and Educating Archie. He began collaborating with writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson on Calling All Forces, leading to his own headline comedy, Hancock’s Half-Hour in 1954. In a break from the variety show/sketch format, Hancock and his writers focused on a single recurring character – the pompous and Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, whose attempts at self-betterment were invariably frustrated. A phenomenal success, the show helped launch the careers of Sid James and Kenneth Williams. A television version, The Tony Hancock Show, was produced by the Independent Television Network in 1956, though bore little resemblance to the radio show and was not a great success. Later that year, the BBC launched a TV version of Hancock’s Half Hour, scripted by Galton and Simpson and returning to the sitcom format. A critical and ratings success, it ran until 1961. The 1961 episode The Blood Donor, in which Hancock’s character donates blood, only to have it transfused back into him following an accident, is now considered a classic of British TV comedy. Offscreen, Hancock struggled with the same anxieties and thwarted ambitions as his alter-ego. Desperately insecure, a heavy drinker and irritated at not being considered a serious artist, he discarded Galton and Simpson, attempting unsuccessfully to break into the US market with a 1963 Hancock spinoff and two comedy films. His career faltered through the 1960s, with a series of unsuccessful comebacks, exacerbating his alcoholism and abuse of prescription medication. In 1968, he travelled to Australia to make a TV comedy series, in which the Hancock character emigrates down-under. Midway through filming, he committed suicide with an overdose of vodka and pills. He was 44. Married and divorced twice, he had a series of affairs, including with Joan le Mesurier, the wife of his best friend and colleague John le Mesurier. In his 1999 biography, Cliff Goodwin revealed that Hancock was secretly gay, detailing a sexual encounter from his RAF days, appearances at gay bars in Soho and his attempt to sexually molest the singer Matt Monro on an overnight train journey. Now considered one of Britain’s greatest comedians, he was portrayed by Alfred Molina in a 1991 TV biopic, by Martin Trenaman in the Williams biopic Fantabulosa! and by Ken Stott in Hancock and Joan.