Ray Galton: 'I punched a writer in the face'

Veteran comedy writer Ray Galton has revealed that he punched a writer in the face for suggesting that he took pleasure in Tony Hancock's decline.

Latterly remembered for looking vaguely appalled as Terry Scott's deckchair collapsed, or for some deliciously acid exchanges in Ab Fab ("In this body there is a thin person dying to get out." "Just the one, dear?"), there's more to June Whitfield than just a succession of second fiddles. Covering her West End debut during the Blitz, to her postwar heyday (Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd) and beyond, this is a charming celebration of her career.

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson have been writing together for 60 years and given us classic comedies. If they never write another word we are all in their debt. Radio 2 had a good idea to celebrate their partnership by recreating some of their old scripts for today's new comedy stars. The last in the series was Paul Merton in the role Tony Hancock made famous, The Blood Donor.

Actually, it was written for Arthur Lowe so, in theory, it should have passed easily into another voice. Unfortunately, it didn't. Merton sounded as if he were reading. So did June Whitfield's daughter, Suzy Aitchison, playing the nurse, the role her mother took so memorably 48 years ago. Why? It wasn't the script or the players. It's the art of good comedy production that's gone missing. The technical process has grown easier. The making of words into magic remains a tricky art.

The final programme marking Galton and Simpson's 60-year writing partnership is a new version of one of their most famous works. Originally written for Tony Hancock, The Blood Donor is regarded as a comedy classic, so it's a brave man who would step into Hancock's shoes and take on what is pretty much a perfect piece of comedy writing.

Here Paul Merton takes the Hancock role and, despite seeming a little un-easy at times, comes about as close to anyone as carrying it off.

The script has been tweaked a bit to bring it up to date, but none of the memorable lines have been lost. And in an affectionate nod to the past, Suzi Aitchison takes the role of the nurse - a part played by her mother June Whitfield in the original 48 years ago.

This short comedy season, celebrating the 60-year writing partnership of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson by putting on a quartet of old scripts with new performers, ends on a bold note. Paul Merton recreates The Blood Donor, written for and performed by Tony Hancock in 1961, the classic where our self-important hero answers the call and gets a few surprises. It's bold of Merton to attempt this as, try as he may to present himself as a curmudgeon, everyone thinks he's a nice guy because, unlike Hancock, we feel we know his personality through panel games.

When Paul Merton performed in some rejigged Galton and Simpson comedies on ITV in the late 1990s, he did attempt some of the classic Hancock's Half Hour/Hancock episodes, but wisely steered clear of the classic Blood Donor. No such luck here, as possibly the most well-known episode of Tony Hancock's sitcom stars Merton in the last of this series of radio adaptations. All in all, it's been an odd series - the delivery and content often sounding antiquated and jarring with some of the contemporary updates.

Episodes one and two might be a slow burn, establishing the No Heroics universe in the same way that the early Friends episodes worked to acclimatise us to the improbably perfect world of six Gotham singletons. By the third instalment though, the hapless heroes are established as a superior sitcom characters that deserve a spot in the pantheon of loveable loser comedy that stretches from Tony Hancock to David Brent.

Packed with in-jokes for the fanboys, and perfectly normal jokes for the rest of us, No Heroics looks like a superior sitcom that will keep the long autumn nights safe for Truth, Justice, and the Comedy Way.

Although everyone gets his or her own punch lines, Lee responds to almost everything with a joke - we're meant to see it as a half-charming character defect - and so there's one every few lines when he's around. That relentlessness is eventually funny in itself - it's the Henny Youngman Effect, it wears you down. The pace is rapid and the tone is dry, and the rhythms and melodies of the jokes are particularly English and at times seem to jump back 50 years to the days of Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne.

Jack Dee's back with a second series of his (written with Pete Sinclair) hugely enjoyable BBC2 sitcom Lead Balloon.

Dee's portrayal of cantankerous, middle-aged comedian Rick Spleen has more than a touch of a media-class Tony Hancock to it - a character whose talent for digging himself into holes is second only to a grave-digger's.

One of the main joys of Lead Balloon is its small cast of supporting characters, comprising Rick's supremely patient wife (Raquel Cassidy), staggeringly vague daughter Sam (Antonia Campbell-Hughes), their permanently unheppy Polish home help Magda (brilliantly played by Anna Crilly) and his far-smarter co-writer Marty (Sean Power).

Even as minor a role as over-familiar local cafe owner Michael (Tony Gardner) is a perfectly formed, fully drawn character.

Every one of them was on top form, producing a just about flawless half hour of delightfully miserablist comedy. Lead Balloon is sure to go down well again this winter.