'Innit Marvellous!': Saving the Galton and Simpson Archive for the nation

The University of York has a unique opportunity to acquire the Galton and Simpson Archive, and we need your support.

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson are two of the most influential figures in the history of British comedy. They created ‘Hancock's Half Hour’ and ‘Steptoe and Son’, two of the most iconic and beloved sitcoms of all time. Their work has profoundly impacted generations of comedians and comedy writers, and their shows continue to be enjoyed by millions around the world today. Anything you can give will help us to secure this work for academic study, and the whole comedy community for the future. Thank you. 

A short summary of our project

The Galton and Simpson Archive is a national treasure, and we are determined to bring it to York.  It includes unseen originalscripts, contracts, correspondence, and other items that document their careers, from their early days writing for radio to their later successes in television and film.

York is already home to several significant archives related to post-war popular entertainment, including those of Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Frankie Howerd, and Barry Took. Adding the Galton and Simpson Archive would establish York as the centre of excellence for studying popular entertainment in the UK.

“The Galton and Simpson archive is little short of being a national treasure. Starting with Hancock’s Half Hour, they literally invented the modern television sitcom; Steptoe and Son shortly followed. Galton and Simpson were the outstanding British television comedy writers of the 20th century, and their work has had a profound influence on generations of comedians and comedy writers ever since. I am proud to support this project with both my money and time."

Greg Dyke

Former Director General of the BBC and Chief Executive of London Weekend Television. 

Why are Galton and Simpson important?

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson were the pioneering duo behind the modern British sitcom. Meeting in a tuberculosis sanatorium in 1947, their shared sense of humour launched a lifelong creative partnership. They began by writing for BBC radio and soon teamed up with Tony Hancock to create Hancock’s Half Hour - a groundbreaking comedy that brought relatable humour into the drab everyday post-war British experience. This series didn’t just make Hancock a star; it redefined comedy by rooting it in realism rather than escapism. It ran successfully on both radio and television, pre-dating I Love Lucy and influencing generations of writers and performers on both sides of the Atlantic.

After parting ways with Hancock, Galton and Simpson created Comedy Playhouse, from which emerged Steptoe and Son, a gritty, character-driven sitcom about a father-and-son rag-and-bone team. Hugely popular, it ran in the UK for over a decade and inspired the American hit Sanford and Son. Though Alan Simpson retired in 1978, Ray Galton continued writing, and the pair were awarded OBEs in 2000 for their services to British television. Their legacy laid the foundation for sitcoms as we know them today. This crowdfund honours their contribution to British culture and helps preserve their story for future generations.

About the archive

The archive is incredible in its scale, breadth and comprehensiveness. Its chief attraction is the exceptionally comprehensive collection of scripts, covering the whole of their impressive career. This includes annotated drafts and finalised versions of Hancock’s Half Hour for Radio and TV, and the same for Steptoe and Son and its successful American comparator, Sandford and Son. This would be a compelling archive in its own right. However, it is being offered with an equally substantial collection of contracts and professional correspondence for the duo via their agent, which documents the pair’s work, amicable writing split in the 1970s, and subsequent revival work in the 1990s and 2000s.

Why York? 

Thanks to the generous support of the Storey Fund and the Storey family, we have been able to amass a significant collection of archives related to post-war popular entertainment in the UK. This includes the archives of Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, Frankie Howerd, Barry Took, Ernest Maxin, Charles Wood, Peter Whelan, Yvonne Mitchell, Julia Pascal, the Goon Show Preservation Society and Eric Morecambe’s joke books. Overall, these archives - with their particular focus on popular entertainment and humour - document how we saw our world and ourselves through the mediums of humour and drama, created in a time of intense change as radio gave way to television.

On analysis of the archives, two figures emerged as invisible threads linking them together. One was Frankie Howerd, whose archive we acquired in 2021. The other is Galton and Simpson. Adding the archive to our collection will help York cement its reputation as the place where the development of popular entertainment can be studied and appreciated. Archives work best when they can speak to each other, inform each other, and give new perspectives on the same events. 

There are also a couple of surprising links to the city of York - not only did they write a 1977 episode of Comedy Playhouse centred on a big win at York Races (‘Big Deal at York City’), but also Ray Galton’s last work - ‘Steptoe and Son in Murder at Oil Drum Lane’ - premiered at York Theatre Royal in 2005. The play effectively ends the Steptoe and Son story - so it would be incredibly fitting for the archive to find its home here. 

What are the costs involved?

The primary thing we need to do is finalise fundraising to acquire the archive - if we don’t, there is a risk that we might lose some of the archive through sales into private hands as they are currently only on loan to us. To date, we have raised over a quarter of a million pounds to help save the archive, but we still need £30,000 to finally secure the archive in total. 

What will we do with it once we have it?

We’ll need to bring the archive to life - we need to make it a living, evolving resource not only for academics and students here at York but for the whole comedy community.

Firstly, we’ll need to catalogue the archive. This may sound a bit dull, but it’s the crucial step to make the archive discoverable online. Our catalogue - Borthcat - sends its data out to other online discovery portals, including Google, and that’s how most of our 70,000 users around the world find us. 

Then, we’ll need to make sure people know it’s here and start to generate ideas about what's next, including working with students in our School of Arts and Creative Technologies to learn from the treasures that Ray and Alan created.

In the longer term (and with additional funding) we hope that we could also: 

• Employ an engagement coordinator to engage with the community, schools, and comedy enthusiasts to share the archive's legacy. 
• Digitise parts of the archive where rights allow and make it available online.
• Support funded positions for early career professionals to explore the archive's materials
• Provide student internships, giving students hands-on experience in cataloguing, preserving and promoting the archive and developing new interpretative content for online discovery.
• Host an event on Ray and Alan here in York to celebrate their work.

Help us succeed!

And if you’re not able to give money to help us succeed, please share this project with anyone you think would support us – on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, by email, telephone, in a chat over the fence or on your blog!

We’d be thrilled if you could share it with everyone you know as we think it's a great idea, and the more people who know about it, the more likely we are to be able to secure these invaluable archives.

And we know we said you don't need to give money to help us, but we'd love it if you did! Please donate and help make this happen.

If you are considering a larger gift and would like to have a conversation first, please get in touch with Sharon Oakley, on sharon.oakley@york.ac.uk.