18 Facts About Tommy Handley

Thomas Reginald Handley was an English comedian, best known for the BBC radio programme It's That Man Again which ran between 1939 and 1949.

Tommy Handley starred as the good-natured, fast-talking anchor-man around whom a cast of eccentric comic characters revolved.

Tommy Handley died suddenly in 1949, and ITMA died with him.

Tommy Handley was born at Toxteth Park, Liverpool, on 17 January 1892, the son of John Tommy Handley and his wife, Sarah Ann, nee Pearson.

John Handley, who is believed to have run a dairy business, died while Tommy was a baby.

Tommy Handley was determined to go into show business and became a professional singer in 1916.

Tommy Handley toured briefly in the operetta The Maid of the Mountains, before being called up in 1917 into the Royal Naval Air Service.

Carte wrote to offer him a place in a new D'Oyly Carte touring company, but by the time the invitation arrived Tommy Handley was contractually committed elsewhere.

Tommy Handley toured in musical comedy and in the music halls as a comedian and singer.

Tommy Handley became known in the leading role of the officer in the sketch The Disorderly Room, a parody of military life, written by Eric Blore, in which military disciplinary proceedings were comically set to popular tunes of the day.

The sketch remained in his repertory from 1921 to 1941, and according to Tommy Handley's biographer Ted Kavanagh "it must have been played on every music-hall stage in the country".

Tommy Handley was successful on the halls, but he was not a major star.

In 1929 Tommy Handley married the actress and singer Jean Allistone whom he had met at the BBC.

Tommy Handley had trained under Sir Herbert Tree, appeared in revues and musical comedies and, from 1925, was a pioneer broadcaster.

Between 1935 and 1949 Tommy Handley frequently performed on air with the comedian Ronald Frankau in a comedy act as "Mr Murgatroyd and Mr Winterbottom".

Together they wrote and delivered what Took describes as "a sophisticated crosstalk of quickfire word and idea association"; the combination of the Old Etonian Frankau's patrician tones as Murgatroyd and Tommy Handley's fast-talking Scouse patter as Winterbottom became one of the BBC's most popular comedy features.

Tommy Handley was cast as the Minister of Aggravation and Mysteries at the Office of Twerps, surrounded by a cast of bizarre characters; they included, at various times, the bibulous Colonel Chinstrap, the morose Mona Lott, the incompetent German spy Funf, the formidable charlady Mrs Mopp, the dubious vendor Ali Oop, and the ultra-polite broker's men Claude and Cecil.

Tommy Handley's death was announced on air by the Director General of the BBC, Sir William Haley, who insisted on making the announcement himself.