The Old Un’s Notes

In memoriam: Jonathan Cecil (1939-2011) in 1972

How quickly time flies! It is already ten years since the death, on 22nd September 2011, of the much-loved British comic actor Jonathan Cecil (19392011), once described by the Spectator as ‘one of the finest upper-class-twits of his era’.

Upper-class he certainly was – the son of the writer Lord David Cecil. His many distinguished relatives included Elizabeth I’s chief minister, Lord Burghley, his son Robert Cecil (her great spymaster after the death of Walsingham) and three-times Prime Minister Lord Salisbury.

Jonathan was no twit in real life. After Eton and Oxford – with Dennis Potter, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett – he trained at LAMDA, where fellow students included Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi. He also reviewed books for the Spectator, the Times Literary Supplement and others, and took a keen interest in the history of the theatre and music hall.

Though he was praised for his ‘straight’ acting, his looks and accent made him a perfect choice for playing dim-witted toffs such as PG Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster and the hapless Captain Cadbury in a 1973 Dad’s Army episode.

He also narrated a number of talking-book versions of Plum’s stories, and was praised for giving ‘his now celebrated impersonation of a semi-detached goldfish’ (Sheridan Morley).

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography described him thus: ‘A colourful character, often seen in an immaculate Jermyn Street suit set off by a raffish fedora, he was a bon viveur and a brilliant raconteur, and spent much time at the Garrick Club.’

Stone me! Hancock’s back! Or almost … because it’s not quite the lad himself.

Seasoned oldie comedy writers (and Galton and Simpson fans) Simon Hardeman and Spike Breakwell have produced a new ‘radio’ series called Hancock’s Half House.

Set in the present, it follows the fortunes of one Terry Hancock, who has unexpectedly inherited a property in Railway Cuttings, East Cheam – left to him by his apparently illustrious grandfather.

Terry’s problems include a dodgy housemate, Sigmund (‘Call me Sig’) James, and a

Among this month’s contributors

Jilly Cooper (p13) is one of Britain’s most popular writers. She is author of Mount!, Polo and Riders. Her new book is Between the Covers: Sex, Socialising and Survival. She was in the first Oldie issue in 1992.

Graham Boal QC (p27) was First Senior Prosecuting Counsel and a judge at the Old Bailey. He was involved in the trial of Jeremy Thorpe, the last appeal of the Birmingham Six and the Guinness trial.

Paul Heiney (p18) is a broadcaster and writer who became a farmer, using carthorses rather than tractors. Having now retired from a life on the land, he has returned to his first love, of ocean sailing.

Liz Hodgkinson (p11) began her career on a rabble-rousing mass-circulation tabloid. She progressed to The Lady, where she is now a columnist. She is the mother of The Oldie’s Town Mouse, Tom Hodgkinson.

23 Railway Cuttings revisited: Anthony Aloysius Hancock

nosy – and nasal – neighbour sounding not unlike Kenneth Williams.

Ex-stand-ups Hardeman and Breakwell previously worked for the BBC on Week Ending and The News Huddlines, and for Rory Bremner’s show on Channel 4.

Breakwell says, ‘Hancock’s Half Hour is still better than pretty much any other comedy you can hear on radio or podcast, and we have both always loved it.’

Hardeman (who plays Terry) adds, ‘We’ve had fun playing with a new character in the Hancock tradition. He imagines himself to be woke, environmental and on the cultural cusp, while not actually understanding any of that.’

The new six-part series will be available as a podcast

Important stories you may have missed

Bus stop is possibility in Innerleithen Border Telegraph Prince Charles steps in cow pat at Great Yorkshire Show Telegraph

Parrot who went missing near Loch Lomond found in Dalry Ayrshire Daily News

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‘Ed Spenks is the poor man’s Ed Spenks’

on Spotify, iTunes and other podcast providers on Tuesdays from 5th October. Go to hancockshalfhouse.com to watch a trailer.

Tony Hancock isn’t the only legend to be revived. The Old Un has heard some exciting news from 221B Baker Street.

Britain’s greatest sleuth has been reimagined in a new series, The Unexpurgated Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by NP Sercombe.

The books reinvent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories as they were supposedly written and delivered, before savage editing by George Newnes at The Strand magazine.

Dr Watson’s ‘original’ versions portray the protagonists’ humanity, told in the bluff, honest and amusing style of an ex-army surgeon. They also reveal how the master detective and his companion celebrate their successes and conduct their personal lives in London at the height of the Empire.

We meet Holmes’s parents – a pioneering nuclear scientist, who is building the world’s first atomic bomb in Godalming, The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel may have been planet-brained. But he was also almost impossible to understand – as he himself confessed.

That’s one of the revelations in Berlin: The Story of a City, a new book by

Toulouse-Lautrec’s FlowerSeller – from A History of Cut Flowers by Randy Malamud Sherlock Holmes – the lost years. NP Sercombe’s sequel

and a research botanist. Holmes has a sister alongside his cunning brother, Mycroft. Holmes purists will recoil but, then again, the best form of flattery is imitation.

The Old Un adores

Strange Bright Blooms: A History of Cut Flowers, a new book by Randy Malamud. Malamud writes about the flower girls of the 19th century, including Toulouse-Lautrec’s FlowerSeller, painted in 1894. Flower girls have been plying their trade in Paris’s Marché aux Fleurs on the Ile de la Cité since 1808.

What’s it all about, Georgie? Hegel (1770-1831)

Sir Barney White-Spunner, former Commander of the Field Army.

‘Hegel was an indifferent lecturer,’ Sir Barney writes. ‘He mumbled and his pupils found him very difficult to understand. He said himself that he thought there was only one person who did actually understand him and “even he did not”.’

Silly old Hegel. If he’d been really clever, he’d have known that a little learning is a dangerous thing. It’s best to stop educating yourself when you become unintelligible. As that great philosopher Bertie Wooster once told his valet, ‘I cannot do with any more education, Jeeves! I was full up years ago!’

The Old Un is delighted to hear that his favourite barrister, Rumpole of the Bailey, is also to be