also remembered earlier forays to London, reconnaissance trips that Nation made in 1954, but which didn’t form part of his personal mythology. Also missing from most of Nation’s versions of those early days was the fact that it was the BBC who sent him to see Spike Milligan in the first place.
Milligan and Eric Sykes, both established comedy writers but neither with full-time representation, had decided to form their own agency in the summer of 1954, bringing in the younger team of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson to create Associated London Scripts (ALS). Sykes and Milligan already shared an office above a greengrocer’s shop in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, and this was to become the home of ALS, one of the most influential institutions in the cultural life of post-war Britain. ‘The intention was to encourage new writers,’ explained Beryl Vertue, then the secretary at ALS, though later to become a successful television producer in her own right. ‘And this was a bit of a godsend for the BBC, because when they found comedy writers, they’d often say: Why don’t you go down and see those people in Shepherd’s Bush. And so Terry would have arrived as part of that.’
Nation had indeed already been to the BBC, having had a meeting with the script editor and producer Gale Pedrick in March 1955, and it was from there that he was sent to see Milligan at ALS. But an even more significant oversight in Nation’s later accounts was the failure to mention his partner, Dick Barry, who accompanied him to that meeting. The earliest press coverage Nation ever received came in a South Wales Echo article in May 1955, which saluted ‘the tenacity, initiative and guts’ of ‘two young men from Cardiff’, and made it clear that those early months of struggle were not endured alone: ‘Terry Nation was a furniture salesman and Dick Barry an accounts clerk until early this year. They had started to write scripts for their own amusement some months before, but in January they threw up their steady jobs. Off they went to London like Dick Whittington to seek some fortune.’ The two men went together to see Pedrick, and the meeting appears to have been cordial enough, for Nation wrote to thank him for his ‘encouragement and advice’ and promised to ‘submit some [scripts] to you as soon as possible’. In the event, however, they had no further dealings with him, seemingly finding no need once they had been referred to Shepherd’s Bush and found themselves taken under Milligan’s wing.
Their timing was impeccable. They were not the first recruits to the agency, for a handful of others (notably Johnny Speight, later to create Alf Garnett) had already become part of ALS, but these were still early days in a venture that was to transform the role of writers on radio and television. Indeed they were still relatively early days for the concept of comedy scriptwriters at all.
In the days when comedians had been solely concerned with live performance, it had always been assumed by audiences that they wrote their own material. ‘Obviously there had always been many a humorist scripting patter and sketches for comedians,’ remarked Eric Sykes, ‘but the names of these backroom stalwarts were a closely guarded secret. They were in a backroom under a forty-watt bulb.’ As The Times later put it, with a wistful touch of nostalgia: ‘We never heard the names of scriptwriters when Little Tich or Harry Tate were around.’ When comedians did start being broadcast by the radio, they were still able to rely on their existing material, since their appearances were for the most part short, sporadic and unheralded items in the midst of a variety show (often with a voice-over to cover the more visual gags).
It was not until 1938, with the arrival of Band Waggon , starring ‘Big Hearted’ Arthur Askey and Richard Stinker’ Murdoch, that a regular comedy series made its debut on the BBC and things began to change. ‘An idea, novel in
Milligan and Eric Sykes, both established comedy writers but neither with full-time representation, had decided to form their own agency in the summer of 1954, bringing in the younger team of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson to create Associated London Scripts (ALS). Sykes and Milligan already shared an office above a greengrocer’s shop in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, and this was to become the home of ALS, one of the most influential institutions in the cultural life of post-war Britain. ‘The intention was to encourage new writers,’ explained Beryl Vertue, then the secretary at ALS, though later to become a successful television producer in her own right. ‘And this was a bit of a godsend for the BBC, because when they found comedy writers, they’d often say: Why don’t you go down and see those people in Shepherd’s Bush. And so Terry would have arrived as part of that.’
Nation had indeed already been to the BBC, having had a meeting with the script editor and producer Gale Pedrick in March 1955, and it was from there that he was sent to see Milligan at ALS. But an even more significant oversight in Nation’s later accounts was the failure to mention his partner, Dick Barry, who accompanied him to that meeting. The earliest press coverage Nation ever received came in a South Wales Echo article in May 1955, which saluted ‘the tenacity, initiative and guts’ of ‘two young men from Cardiff’, and made it clear that those early months of struggle were not endured alone: ‘Terry Nation was a furniture salesman and Dick Barry an accounts clerk until early this year. They had started to write scripts for their own amusement some months before, but in January they threw up their steady jobs. Off they went to London like Dick Whittington to seek some fortune.’ The two men went together to see Pedrick, and the meeting appears to have been cordial enough, for Nation wrote to thank him for his ‘encouragement and advice’ and promised to ‘submit some [scripts] to you as soon as possible’. In the event, however, they had no further dealings with him, seemingly finding no need once they had been referred to Shepherd’s Bush and found themselves taken under Milligan’s wing.
Their timing was impeccable. They were not the first recruits to the agency, for a handful of others (notably Johnny Speight, later to create Alf Garnett) had already become part of ALS, but these were still early days in a venture that was to transform the role of writers on radio and television. Indeed they were still relatively early days for the concept of comedy scriptwriters at all.
In the days when comedians had been solely concerned with live performance, it had always been assumed by audiences that they wrote their own material. ‘Obviously there had always been many a humorist scripting patter and sketches for comedians,’ remarked Eric Sykes, ‘but the names of these backroom stalwarts were a closely guarded secret. They were in a backroom under a forty-watt bulb.’ As The Times later put it, with a wistful touch of nostalgia: ‘We never heard the names of scriptwriters when Little Tich or Harry Tate were around.’ When comedians did start being broadcast by the radio, they were still able to rely on their existing material, since their appearances were for the most part short, sporadic and unheralded items in the midst of a variety show (often with a voice-over to cover the more visual gags).
It was not until 1938, with the arrival of Band Waggon , starring ‘Big Hearted’ Arthur Askey and Richard Stinker’ Murdoch, that a regular comedy series made its debut on the BBC and things began to change. ‘An idea, novel in
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