Unless you’re a current collector of Old Time Radio whose interest extends to the early days of the BBC or are researching the Homefront in the UK during the years of World War 2, the name Tommy Handley won’t ring any bells of recognition.
But Tommy Handley was one of the most recognized figures on radio during the dark days of World War 2, when Britain was in the midst of the Blitz and the terrifying possibilities of an invasion from Nazi Germany.
It was comics like Tommy Handley who boosted morale and injected humor into a world that was reeling from nightly air raids and mass destruction. Where any distraction was a blessing, no matter how brief.
Tommy Handley was best known for the BBC radio program It’s That Man Again (“ITMA”) which ran between 1939 and 1949.
Born in Liverpool, Lancashire, Handley went on the stage in his teens and after military service in the First World War he established himself as a comedian and singer on the music hall circuit. He became nationally known as a pioneer broadcaster. From 1924 onwards he was frequently heard on BBC variety programs as a solo entertainer and an actor in sketches. In the 1930s Tommy Handley frequently performed on air with the comedian Ronald Frankau in a popular comedy act as “Mr Murgatroyd and Mr Winterbottom”.
Handley’s greatest success came in 1939 with the BBC radio comedy show It’s That Man Again, which, after an uncertain start, caught the British public’s imagination and reached an unprecedentedly large audience. He starred as the good-natured, fast-talking anchor-man around whom a cast of eccentric comic characters revolved. The show was credited for its important part in keeping up morale in Britain during the Second World War.
Handley died suddenly in 1949, and ITMA died with him.
This broadcast, from the BBC World Service program London Letter, is a tribute to Tommy Hadley who had died earlier in the day on January 9th and was a tribute to the legendary comedian on January 13.
