The Bowmans The Bowmans "The Bowmans" is an episode of the BBC television situation comedy programme "Hancock", the final BBC series featuring Tony Hancock, first broadcast on 2 June 1961. It was written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The title is a retronym; the episodes were not originally identified separately. Hancock plays an actor in a fictional radio serial called "The Bowmans", a parody of the real BBC radio programme "The Archers". The theme tune to "The Bowmans" is a close variation by series composer Wally Stott of the real "Archers" theme tune "Barwick Green". Hancock plays Joshua Merriweather, a character
The Old Tune play did not die, however. The Old Tune The Old Tune is a free translation of Robert Pinget’s 1960 play La Manivelle ("The Crank") in which Samuel Beckett transformed Pinget’s Parisians, Toupin and Pommard into Dubliners, Cream and Gorman. Its first radio broadcast was by the BBC on 23 August 1960. Barbara Bray directed Jack MacGowran (Cream) and Patrick Magee (Gorman). For the unspecified old tune played by Gorman on the barrel organ Beckett selected "The Bluebells of Scotland", suggested by the bank of bluebells mentioned near the start of the play. In 1957, Pinget, who at the time was