Hancock's Half Hour: "A Visit To Swansea"

Goon Pod

"... Must admit he was very funny. I laughed. I laughed a great deal. Thought I was going to cry. I did."

A Visit to Swansea was the fourth episode of the second series of Hancock’s Half Hour and was originally broadcast on 10th May 1955, two days before Tony Hancock’s 31st birthday.

It was long considered one of the missing Hancocks until it was discovered last year by Richard Harrison of the Radio Circle and came from the same collection of recordings as The Marriage Bureau – the only episode of HHH to feature Peter Sellers and one we covered on Goon Pod previously with the guys from the Very Nearly An Armful podcast.

It’s intriguing as this is another formerly missing show to feature a Goon – in this case Harry Secombe in a cameo, and it followed on from the three previous episodes of HHH in which Secombe stood in for Hancock who had undergone some sort of breakdown and gone off to Italy.

Naturally it warranted an evaluation on Goon Pod and who better to talk all things Hancock than friend of the show Scott Phipps, host of such shows as Reel Britannia and the Talking Pictures podcast.