ALAS, POOR YORICK!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 503, 11 February 1949, Page 14

ALAS, POOR YORICK!

(By Airmail — Special to

The Listener

JANUARY 15 "THE news of Tommy Handley’s sudden death was received in England with widespread sorrow. It was probably wider and more deeply felt than anyone on the other side of the world can imagine who. has not heard ITMA on the spot (only a few hours removed from the news with. which it was always topically linked), and realised how close it was to the hearts of millions of people. In fact, ITMA had lately gone off a little, but it had lost none of the affection of its listeners.: The truly faithful were those who, far from swearing that they never missed an ITMA, were fond enough of it to turn it off altogether if the first few minutes fell flat, rather than persevere and hear it drag as sometimes it had to do. For you could always tell, by the first few minutes whether the weekly script-confer-ence had gone off, in high spirits, or ‘whether it had been a labour. If you were weak-willed and only left ITMA

on for the sake of hearing the Colonel or Mona Lott you were left deflatedespecially if you had been rash enough to turn it on in the presence of friends who were not of the faithful. One of the reasons why ITMA had this continued hold on the affection of its listeners was that it had. been ag relief and an escape in the worst years of the war; and one clings to a friend who helped at a time of worry. But it could never have achieved that status of friend-in-need without some unusual qualities, and of these Handley’s own genius was probably the first. As Sir William Haley, Director General of the BBC, said in a rather mournful little memorial programme which took the place of the last announced ITMA, "He had that rare gift which few are born with and most never acquire, of being able to broadcast sincerity." There-were many, of course, on whom ‘his heartiness and vitality jarred, and who had no taste for Ted Kavanagh’s puns or his allusive humour. But it would be hard to think of many other people in England at present whose death would be received so sadly.

*T HE Manchester Guardian, which re- ‘" ferred to his death in four different places in its issue of the following day, headed its sub-leader, "The Man who was Thursday." He was also Saturday lunchtime, or Sunday afternoon, if you missed the first repeat as well as the actual performance on Thursday at 8.30. * * * ? I TMA spans an age," said the DirectorGeneral in his appreciation- its title originally referred to Hitler. The programme was started in 1939 under the name It’s That Man Again, and changed to the initials-title when initials-words began to spread like weeds over the pages of the daily paper. Handley himself gave it the abbreviated name. Then Handley became a_e great personage (head of the Office of Twerps, for instance), was pursued by enemy agents (such as Funf), evacuated to Foaming-in-the-Mouth, and all the time satirised rules and regulations and pricked the bubble of other people’s inflated dignity wherever he went. Jack Train (Colonel Chinstrap) was in it from the beginning, and was the only member of the original cast who was there at the end, apart from Handley himself. The scripts were written from beginning to end by Ted Kavanagh, and the production was all done by Francis Worsley-who writes

a short history of "A world of your own" in this week’s New Statesman and Nation. * * * ANDLEY himself was a modest and kindly fellow who had worked the hard way on the music halls, and had a big reputation before ITMA was thought of. He was Murgatroyd (or was it Winterbottom?) with Ronald Frankau. He was not rich, because he had never earned a high figure until there were also high taxes. But latterly he lived for ITMA, and always refused to do anything that would overdraw his energies. Anyone who ever saw ITMA in the studio could see that there was something more than ordinary professional co-operation animating the cast. They were good friends, and they all loved Handley. On the Thursday after his death they went to the funeral in the afternoon and in the evening they gathered in the studio from which the very first ITMA was broadcast (at, Maida Vale) to hear the Director-General’s appreciation, followed by a programme of some of ITMA’s music and songs. None of the characters were heard, but some of the singers had to sing their snappy songs like old troupers. Then the narrator (John Snagge, chief Home Service announcer) proposed a toast to ITMA,

the orchestra played the theme tune for the last time-and they all had a good cry. It was mournful, but it was completely genuine, and millions of listeners must have felt the same way about it. * So passes one of ‘the first really memorable phenomena of radio entertainment, at a time when even the medium as it now exists seems likely to disappear, giving place to television. * * * | MYSELF have one reminiscence of That Man, which belongs to a time of which I wrote earlier in this column, when I was marvelling at the way one meets acquaintances in London, I went to an ITMA in the studio early last year, for the first and only time. On the next morning, I took a letter to post on my way to work, and made’ for a letter-box at Craven Hill (a few steps from Paddington Station) whicH as I happened to know was where Handley lived. As one sees an unusual word for the first time and then meets it in a book a few hours later, so I met Tommy Handley making for the same letter-box at the same moment, exactly 12 hours after I had first seen him. His coat collar was turned up, and his hat pulled down. I took this as meaning that he is the kind of man who hates being stared at, and pretended not to have recognised him. But it was hard to resist the temptation to grin. He was a great jester. There will be no more ITMAs, nor any attempt to use the same characters in a similar show. Their "world of their own" has, as Mr. Worsley says in the New Statesman, "collapsed ag completely as’ the Third Reich which

brought it into being." td

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