This Is Your Life: Sheila Hancock

Sheila HANCOCK OBE (1933-)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Sheila Hancock, actress, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the curtain call of the play The Bed Before Yesterday at London's Lyric Theatre, from where the programme was then recorded.

Sheila, who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, worked in provincial repertory theatre during the 1950s, before making her West End debut in 1958 in the play Breath of Spring. She appeared in the revue One Over the Eight with Kenneth Williams in 1961, and in the following year starred in the play Rattle of a Simple Man, a performance which earned her the Best Actress Award from the Evening Standard.

Her break into television was in the role of Carol in the BBC sitcom The Rag Trade in the early 1960s, and she went on to play leading roles in the sitcoms Mr Digby Darling and Now Take My Wife.

"Oh Eamonn! John, oh my goodness, how could you keep it secret?"

programme details...

Edition No: 451
Subject No: 448
Broadcast date: Wed 5 Jan 1977
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Wed 24 Nov 1976
Venue: Lyric Theatre, London
Series: 17
Edition: 11
Code name: Honeymoon

on the guest list...

company members of The Bed Before Yesterday
John Thaw
Abigail - daughter
Ellie Jane - daughter
John Moffat
Ben Travers
Billie - sister
Roy - brother-in-law
Alan Coast
Ruby - aunt
Stella Riley
Peter Jones
Reg Varney
Dilys Laye
Edward Woodward
Tony Beckley
Richard Briers
Dr Cicely Saunders
Miriam Karlin
Joanna - daughter

production team...

Researcher: Debbie Gaunt
Writer: John Sandilands
Directors: Royston Mayoh, Terry Yarwood
Producer: Jack Crawshaw

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

An Actor's Life For Me

spotlight on the stars

Family Life

keeping it in the family

Screenshots of Sheila Hancock This Is Your Life

Sheila Hancock recalls her experience of This Is Your Life in her autobiography, Ramblings of an Actress...

During the run of Bed Before Yesterday in 1976, I was told they were going to do a documentary about the author, Ben Travers, on his ninetieth year.

I protested vehemently when they said they wanted to film the end of the play from one of the boxes during the show, complaining that it would ruin the theatre audience's pleasure.

I moaned to Ben about it when we did an interview and I threw tantrums with the technicians, demanding that their equipment be hidden by curtains. I spent the whole day in a thoroughly nasty temper.

All the way through the performance I whinged to my fellow actors about how badly the play was going as a result of the presence of the camera. It was only when the applause suddenly died during the curtain call as Eamonn Andrews walked on with the dread red book that I realised the whole thing had been a put up job to trap me for This Is Your Life and that Ben, the company and the entire audience had been in the know.

Having believed that I could tell if people were lying to me up to this point, particularly my own family, I have been wary of trusting anyone since. This graceless behaviour during the whole incident was only excusable because it really did stem from a deep concern for the audience's enjoyment...

Presenter Eamonn Andrews and producer Jack Crawshaw recall this edition of This Is Your Life in their book, Surprise Of Your Life...

To surprise Sheila Hancock with This Is Your Life, as she took her curtain call at the end of a hit West End show, was a piece of real-life drama that was thrilling to be part of.

But more than that, it gave us the opportunity to tell Sheila's remarkable story in a setting that, for her, is truly "second home".

It is her immeasurable talent as an actress that has helped her through times in her personal life that have been as tragic as others on stage have been triumphant.

Hearing the tumultuous applause as she took that curtain call, I couldn't help thinking what an honour it was going to be to share that stage with someone whose story was so worthy of praise.

In her life Sheila had staged a brave fight back from great personal loss to continue delighting millions with her talents as a comedy actress.

But there was even more to the life that began for her in Blackgang Isle of White, where she was born, and which flourished in London where she was brought up and attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

She went on to stage stardom in the West End and Broadway before finding further fame with a succession of hits in radio and television.

But at the peak of her professional success she lost her mother, her father and her first husband in the space of three years.

She had nursed all three through their final illnesses, looked after her young daughter and had the courage to continue with her work as well.

Since then she had met and married John Thaw and won even greater admiration from the few people who know how she has offered comfort and understanding to those who have turned to her for help in the moments of crisis, similar to the ones she has faced and overcome.

But no story about Sheila Hancock would be true to life without it's humour outweighing it's pathos. And there was a fair smattering of both in our preparations to catch her unawares.

Our objective to surprise her on stage was straightforward enough, but in an age when more and more rules are there to be obeyed, it did have it's difficulties.

Amongst them was the problem of getting the cameras into the theatre.

First thoughts were to tell Sheila and the cast that the cameras were there to record highlights of the play "The Bed Before Yesterday". But they would have known that would have broken the rule that television cameras are not allowed to record during a play watched by a fee paying audience.

Only when the performance was actually over would it be possible to switch on the tell-tale red lights and begin recording. Fair enough. But how would we convice Sheila that the cameras were there simply to record a curtain call? We couldn't.

So we decided to turn to the voice of experience.

In this case the voice had 90 years of experience because the man we turned to was none other than grand old man of theatre, author of the play and nearly a hundred more besides, Ben Travers.

This Is Your Life Sheila Hancock: Sheila Hancock and Ben Travers

At the outset of the project Ben, a dear friend of Sheila's and an obvious guest for the programme, was so concerned to be with us that he postponed an important trip to New York.

Now we asked him another favour. Would he play the star role in our new cover story. The story was that Thames Television were making a documentary on Ben himself called "Ninety - Not Out", and naturally wanted to interview him and his leading lady, in the theatre, with cameras. Ben agreed.

And so did Sheila when she got a call from interviewer Peter Marshall, asking her to meet Ben and himself at the theatre in the afternoon.

Ben's ruse worked on two counts. It allayed any suspicions Sheila might have about the cameras and it also meant that while she was at the theatre, we could film Sheila and John's baby girl, Joanna, who was too young to appear on the show in person.

So when Joanna giggled her brief message into the programme she would have been tucked up in bed by her nanny at home. What Sheila thought was going to happen that night, of course, was that John would be there at home with the children.

As I stood motionless in the pitch dark of the wings, waiting for the play to end, John was actually with Abigail and Ellie Jane, white-faced, and pacing the aisle outside the stage box, confessing to researcher Debbie Gaunt that he had never been as nervous in his entire life.

This Is Your Life Sheila Hancock: John Thaw

John and the children were not there by chance. We had strategically placed them there, because we didn't know how Sheila would react in a surprise situation, where she would find herself being asked to switch from a fictional role to star in her own story, right there and then. We felt the need for some real-life insurance. So with split second timing we had John and the girls appear in the box, which was directly in Sheila's eye line, the moment I presented her with the book.

It worked. And for me, so did the tribute that followed. A surprise party in which we got more then a glimpse of both sides of Sheila Hancock.

This Is Your Life Sheila Hancock: Eamonn Andrews and Sheila Hancock

Scriptwriter Roy Bottomley recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, This Is Your Life: The Story of Television's Famous Big Red Book...

Sheila was surprised on 24 November 1976, onstage at the Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue, where she was appearing in the Ben Travers farce The Bed Before Yesterday. We recorded the show onstage, and the first surprise was husband John and daughters Ellie Jane and Abigail appearing in the stage 'box'. She thought they were all at home, babysitting for two-year-old Joanna.

Sheila was at RADA, winning a scholarship, after doing some entertaining, with her sister Billie, at their parent's pub in Kings Cross.

Her big break came in BBC TV's The Rag Trade in 1962. Co-stars Peter Jones and Reg Varney were with us, and Miriam Karlin greeted from Leicester where she was on stage.

Sheila won the Evening Standard Best Actress award for her role in Rattle of a Simple Man, and her co-star, Edward Woodward, was there, as was another leading man, Richard Briers.

And to surprise Sheila, the man she called her boyfriend turned up - the author himself, Ben Travers, who was ninety.

Series 17 subjects