Sequels are dangerous things. Very few are as good as the original that spawned them, and when the follow-up is really bad it can actually damage our fondness for the original. "Twin Peaks" was feted on its first airing, but the second series was such a disaster (commercially at least) that now that first series doesn't get much of a mention either. "Look Who's Talking" was a huge success, but was subsequently tarred with the same brush as its less-satisfactory "Too" and "Now" offspring. After thirty or more years of standing as examples of animated motion picture excellence, the past few years have seen the Disney Corporation releasing a string of sequels on the straight to video/DVD market - "Cinderella 2" (so in fact they didn't live happily ever after...), "102 Dalmations" (and yes the animated one achieves the almost impossible feat of being worse than the Glenn Close film), and even "The Little Mermaid 2" in which a human girl wants to be a mermaid. This last sequel has of course been conceived not so much from the imaginative question, "What happens NEXT to our characters?" but rather by simply reversing the plot of the original. By sheer coincidence, my wife and I (on hearing Irene Cara's "What a Feeling" on the radio this afternoon) were discussing the possibility of adapting this idea to "Flashdance", whereby a young dancer dreams of becoming a welder. You laugh now...

So anyway, having duly warned you all of the danger of sequels allow me to now present one of my own. And having waxed lyrical (well, waxed) about Mr Reginald Iolanthe Perrin some months ago, it's now the turn of Mr Antony Aloysius St John H-h-hancock. And once again, I blame the parents!

Tony Hancock is another of those figures whose every briefest appearance on TV would invoke some comment from Mum & Dad when I was young. I mostly remember them spying his name in the credits of "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" and raving about him. Of course 'hype' is another dangerous thing (the danger list reads: Sequels - Hype - Forgotten Wedding Anniversaries, those are the three) and I remember being less than impressed by Mr H's less than show-stealing cameo in said film.

Some years later, in 1986 in fact, the Radio Times devoted their cover, the Omnibus arts programme devoted a season opener, and BBC One devoted six half-hour timeslots, all to Mr Hancock. Omnibus was a documentary on his career, to tie in with repeats of six of the best of his TV shows. Curiously enough our neighbour at the time very much reminded me of Hancock on that Radio Times cover, with his dour expression and slightly moth-eaten jumper, and I forever after thought of the one as being the other. The repeats chosen to demonstrate Hancock's talents were rather more impressive than the disappointing, and minor, part in "Those Magnificent Men..." and comprised, from memory, "The Blood Donor" (of course), "The Lift", "Twelve Angry Men", "The Bowmans", "The Missing Page", and... well, and one more. (I believe a further series of repeats followed the next year, so I may be confusing one batch with another).

The repeats were funny, entertaining, amusing - dated, yes, in terms of their visuals, but nevertheless still very funny. I certainly enjoyed them, but even then I still didn't rave over Hancock. Perhaps fundamentally I still didn't 'get' it. Of those repeats I think my favourites are "Twelve Angry Men" (dispassionately, nay objectively, nay... dispassionately) and "The Bowmans" (I'm not gone yet!). Probably his most celebrated show, "The Blood Donor" is absolute perfection for the first half, but I find the second half to be much weaker, producing a less satisfactory whole than some of the other episodes. Interestingly, I've discovered very recently that "The Blood Donor", which tends to be the first thing people think of on hearing the name Tony Hancock, was the last-but-one TV show that aired - that same, seventh, series also included "The Bedsitter", "The Bowmans", "The Radio Ham" and "The Lift" all of which are regarded as amongst the best of the TV shows. Talk about going out on a high.

My next meeting with Mr Hancock was when an Uncle bought me some of the radio shows on cassette for Christmas one year. For aficionados, the episodes were "The Diary" (generally acclaimed as one of the best), "The Old School Reunion", "Hancock in the Police", and "The East Cheam Drama Festival". I dutifully listened to them, and they were amusing enough, but once again there was no singular spark, nothing that stood out as the hallmark of genius. In retrospect this is very odd, because the latter two particularly are among my favourites now - the police episode is just so silly (boots, boots, boots, boots, marching up and down in boots) and the latter is a nice mix of styles allowing lots more 'gags' than normal. If you ever get to listen to it, my favourite line is "and his fourth sonata".

For a story apparently building up to some kind of epiphany, some life-changing experience on the road to Damascus (or at least East Cheam) I'm afraid I must disappoint. Although I can tell you all the above details of when I really wasn't that bothered about Tony Hancock, I can't point to an incident, or a moment, when that changed. But at some indefinable point he went from being a comedian that I'd seen and heard in a few things, to a genius guaranteed to make me laugh. In the Summer of 1991 my brother and I moved into a flat when Mum & Dad left the area, and from that point on I became chief ironer; and I never did the ironing without something playing in the background. Maybe it was that - maybe it was actually taking the time to relisten properly to Hancock's Half Hour 4 (the collection my Uncle had bought) and laugh as they call Doctor Hancock, or as PC Hancock unwittingly tips Sid off about when to raid Bond Street, or as Hancock disguises himself as a woman, only to be promptly chatted up by Kenneth Williams' Snide. And then in turn maybe it was that which inspired me to pick up Hancocks Half Hour 2, and 3, and 5, and 6, and 7 - another twenty episodes, amongst them probably my absolute favourite being "Hancock in Hospital". For one thing it manages to make us laugh even though nothing actually happens (a trait which also endears "Open All Hours" to me) and for another, whenever I offer refreshment to visitors at Curnow Towers I usually quote Patricia Hayes: "Do you want a biscuit?"

I had a friend at around that time (that's nice then) and maybe he had a hand in my conversion. I don't remember anything definite about that, other than him several times offering to lend me his biography of Hancock. He never did, mainly because the conversations where he offered it were conducted late at night after a visit to the local hostelry and therefore were subject to not actually being remembered the next day, but also because he always referred to it with the warning that it was a very dark and depressing read. Certainly I know enough now to see that Hancock had a very dark side to him. I suppose he was what the psychiatrists would call self-destructive - from having a successful Radio, and then TV, show he slowly whittled away the elements of that success. Sid James, Kenneth Williams... ultimately even Galton & Simpson themselves, who I don't think anybody would dispute were a major factor in the success of both the character and the show. What the reasons for those choices were, who can say - insecurity, arrogance, ignorance, even plain boredom - but we do know that whatever darkness he had in him finally led him to kill himself. I mentioned above an Omnibus documentary; I've heard my brother say that the day before Hancock killed himself he was talking to Charlie Drake and had apparently invited him to make a suicide pact. Drake had dismissed the conversation, but then... Although I don't recall it, I would guess that story heralded from Omnibus. And certainly it's from that programme that I remember his suicide note: Things seemed to go wrong too many times.

But this isn't quite addressing why I like Hancock, is it. Unfortunately it's sometimes hard to pin-point just why you like something, and even more difficult to explain why others should like it too. Part of it though is the simple fact that poor Hancock seems forever at war with the world. Sometimes we can sympathise, more often than not he seems unreasonable, but he still appeals to us, to that slightly pompous, doggedly determined, common man against the system, in all of us.

Of course the sad thing is that Hancock probably won't endure, or at least not to the degree that he should. Although his radio shows are sometimes repeated, it's more likely that the newcomer will come across the lad 'imself on TV. And although the writing on at least some of those episodes is as good as the best of the radio, the limited technology of the time has severely dated those crackly, restricted black & white images. Of course there are still a lot of people who have heard of him, of my age and indeed younger - our very own Secretive Bus is far more an expert on the subject than I. But these are the exceptions now I think. Sadly as time goes on Hancock will be, 'Popular comedian who killed himself in 1968' rather than 'Comedy Genius'. That isn't to say that his work is any the less amusing or that it is no longer of any value - simply that the audience it reaches will shrink over time. But those of us who DO know of him, we can still sit and listen and laugh uproariously, and of course marvel at his perspicacity.

I don't know what it is, but I'm sure he'd want people to marvel at it.