Will Hay, Britain’s greatest film comedian

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This site was last updated 2006-10-21, with a new store.

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Letters from you!

Here is a choice selection of interesting opinions, feedback, personal experiences or just stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else on the page. If you'd like to add your comments, write to me through the email page.

03/09/2002: Thanks for a wonderful site, with some extremely erudite contributors on the letters page. [You see? I let you all take some credit as well! Steve]
My earliest recollection of Will is reluctantly sitting down with my father some time in the '60s to watch Boys Will Be Boys. He promised me it would be the funniest thing I had ever seen, and after a few minutes I was questioning his sanity—where were the custard pies, the plank-in-the-face, the dropped trousers? IT WAS BLACK AND WHITE! I was a fan of in-your-face, cutting edge sixties comedy! You know, Jerry Lewis! Gradually, the creaky rhythms and nuances dragged me in to the world of Will Hay, and I have never re-emerged.
Thanks to BBC2 some years ago, I have all of his main features on vhs, which I'm glad about now as some of them seem hard to find. I am shocked at some of your ratings - I couldn't possibly give any of Will's films less than 5/5. That's not blind devotion, I really can watch and re-watch them all. I love the glimpses of a disappeared Britain that sometimes appear (eg, when setting up the speed trap in Ask A Policeman).
Whatever happened to Jerry Lewis anyway?

Dermot Mitchell

19/08/2002: Just a quick message to let you know how much I enjoy the site. Have you seen any of the films Graham Moffatt and Moore Marriott appeared in together other than their films with Will? The digital/cable channel Carlton Cinema puts some of them on every so often, and since March I’ve seen “Charley’s (Big-Hearted) Aunt”, “Hi Gang” and most recently “Owd Bob”. A few years ago a friend of mine sent me a copy of “Cheer Boys Cheer”. They really are well worth a look.

It’s interesting that although their post-Hay characters usually carried the names Albert and Jerry, and there’s no question that the
characters were the same as they‚d previously portrayed, the name Harbottle wasn’t used after their split from Will. Was this a way of side-stepping copyright issues? I understand that you can‚t copyright a name, so I wonder…

Best wishes

Stephen Archer

26/07/2002: Like the site!!!!
Just wanted to say, I like the Will Hay site, very good indeed. And great to see someone so young keeping his work alive.
Have you seen [this site?] That's another excellent site with a slavish attention to detail.
Ive been a fan of Hay since I was a kid and now I'm 35 I'm enjoying spending my hard earned cash on the DVD's of his films. (When will they release 'Where's That Fire'? It's one of my favourites and I haven't seen it since it was last on TV in the 80's. There is a copy on Ebay but it's going for about £37.00!!)
As an occasional stand up comedian myself in the vein of Rowan Atkinson/Eddie Izzard (I do characters & normal stand-up)I often perform a solo sketch of a school headmaster which owes a great deal to Will Hay and more often than not goes down quite well. (OK, it stops people throwing things at me for a while so that must be a measure of success!!!)
Sadly as most of the great comics are gone now, with a pretty poor line-up replacing them, (Brian Conley, anyone?? I think not!!) I wonder whether we will ever see comedians of the genius of Hay, Hancock, Tommy Cooper or Eric Morecambe again. Now that the funniest man ever in my opinion Spike Milligan is gone (one of the saddest days of my life so far, he taught me so much about comedy) one of our last links to the past has gone. Perhaps we could cryogenically preserve Eric Sykes and Norman Wisdom for future generations.
Oh well, better go and put the cat out (who set it on fire!!)
Sorry for 'Wasting your time!!'
(Actually, have you ever seen the episode of Vic Reeves Channel 4 series 'Big Night Out', where amongst all the loony stuff going on a strange bearded man wanders on and starts shouting to Vic 'You're wasting your time' very much like the scene in Oh' Mr Porter?? Could vic or Bob be Will Hay fans? I wonder.)

Steve Hyett

Vic and Bob are certainly fans of Milligan, which makes it a pity they produce such dross in the shape of Shooting Stars. As for the Will Hay influence, that is destined to remain a mystery. And cryogenically preserve Norman Wisdom? Well, it gave us the Domesday book. He he he.

23/03/2002: Great site, and it's brilliant to see the still criminally underrated Mr. Hay recognised.
To be honest, I think his films hold up variably. In my opinion, "Oh Mr.Porter" is the best (controversial view, I know), followed by "Convict 99" and, by a short distance, "Where there's a Will", which I believe to be better than its reputation.
But all his movies have moments or scenes that rank with the best of all screen comedy. Even recently, watching perhaps his weakest film, "Black Sheep of Whitehall" (FAR too much SHOUTING!!!) I was astonished by the brilliance of the radio interview scene about economics, and various lines like "What's yours?" "I'll have a pint" had me on the floor.
But the man himself is a brilliant comic actor, or RE-actor. If in doubt, just compare his performance to that of John Mills in the latter film—Mills is trying desperately hard to be FUNNY—Hay plays it straight and wipes the floor with him (no disrespect to Sir John intended). Others of Hay's calibre are few and far between—Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Cary Grant, David Jason… not that many.
But thanks for the site, and I hope to hear from you soon.
P.S. I hate to carp, but Marcel Varnel did not direct "The Boys in Blue" - it was Val Guest (who had co-written some of Hay's films). [Thanks. I've fixed that now! Steve]
Cheers!

Stephen McKie

07/03/2002: Do you know why Will Hay films are no longer shown on TV, or if there are plans to do so in future? Also where to obtain Will Hay films on DVD? Would appreciate your help JP Smith.

Check out the Filmography page. As for why his films are not shown on TV any more, that's just the fault of the broadcasters. Carlton own the films (most of them) and have their own channel (Carlton Cinema), but I'd rather they showed stuff that wasn't on DVD! People need to be introduced to Will Hay in some way, though. Maybe by showing Convict 99 or something, but even if the films get shown, they're usually at seven in the morning or something. Sad.

04/03/2002: I have enjoyed your site very much indeed; both the content and the presentation. Could you tell me, please, a good source for film stills featuring Oh, Mr Porter. I am particularly interested in modelling Buggleskelly station.
I notice that your spelling of it is "Buggleskelley" which makes me suspect that my version of it is probably as eccentric as Harbottle's "Buggleskkely".
Regards,
Jim O'Donnell

I don't know of any sources that you're looking for—can anyone help? I am checking my Buggleskelly spellings now!

25/02/2002: It might be worth mentioning this. I have watched "Oh Mr Porter" many times. Some of the stunts are pretty dangerous. The scene where they are discussing shunting for example and Gladstone starts to move. It is not particularly speeded up and I cannot believe how late the actors leave it before jumping up. Gladstone's buffers miss Will Hay by inches. There is no trick photography that I can see.

Will Hay gets hit by a carriage door. Looks pretty sore. Surely a balsa door had been fitted yet the momentum of the door suggests it is real.

Also the windmill: were the actors really climbing out on to the sails in the scene where Will Hay is urging them out further? Once again it looks real. There are real stuntmen on the sails as they go round.

Thanks for putting my mind at rest and confirming that Buggleskelly was Cliddesden. I live in Scotland and would love to pay a visit as homage to a great film but it is a long way. And to think a few years ago I was about 10 miles away in Fleet without realising it!

Don't suppose anybody can pinpoint the stretch of line over which the chase takes place—the single track section? There are what look like glasshouses, a factory and some (then) new semis in the background of some shots. Presume it must be near Basingstoke because the line was being dug up further south I believe.

Great site

W Flood

Thanks! I think nearly all the track in the film has a third rail alongside, and the credits confirm that it was all shot in what is now Railtrack Southern Region. I do not know the exact stretch of track, though. Again, can anyone help?

18/02/2002: NB Buggleskelly is spelt wrong below. According to the map the 'dirty little halt' is precisely where Lisnaskea was on the real life Great Northern Railwayof Ireland (the film's "Southern Railway of Northern Ireland") which was indeed a main line to Belfast.

On your remakes page you credit (if that's the word) Marcel Varnel with "The Boys in Blue". He died 36 years before its release. The director was Val Guest, who had written dialogue for several of the Gainsborough pictures, including "Ask a Policeman". [Again, that's sorted now! Sorry.]

After these nitpicks, congratulations for memorialising the British screen's supreme comedy talent. Having begun as a deadpan straight man and become a reaction comic on the halls—quite a trick without the possibility of close-ups—Hay was a natural for the big screen, with its preference for downplaying, its minute attention to facial expressions and quiet sounds like the trademark sniff. [That was not always deliberate! It often had to be cut out!] More than that, he created a persona which fitted pre-WW2, post-Depression Britain: a seedy character who was no longer young and not quite up to his job, but who would win through in the end as much by luck as judgement. 1930s audiences sensed this "rightness" for the times, which is why Hay succeeded in recycling his stuff from film to film where other big music hall names such as Ernie Lotinga did not.

But Hay was bigger than his times. The middle aged male fantasist, caught between cynicism and a fading hope of glory, fathered a long line of similar types in British small-screen comedy: Anthony Aloysius Hancock (a professed admirer of Hay), Harold Steptoe, Rigsby, Captain Mainwaring, Del-boy, Victor Meldrew all owe something to a man who would have been a natural for TV. Even in "Father Ted" you keep hearing echoes of the schoolmaster being ground between the upper and nether millstones of senile gall and youthful dumb insolence: Marriott and Moffatt.

The persistent vitality of Hay's stereotype means that he must be acknowledged, not only as a superlatively subtle and intelligent funnyman, but as perhaps the most influential single figure in the history of British screen entertainment. And his amazingly fast and black final film, "My Learned Friend", shows that he, if not the boys of St Michael's, never stopped learning. WJ Phillips

29/09/2001: So nice to find a Will Hay website. I think I looked a year or so ago and found none. Well done, informative, great links. I'm in the USA, and it's my hope that more Americans will become introduced to Hay, Moffat and Marriott. They deserve to be as famous over here as Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges.

Sad to read about WHERE'S THAT FIRE? not being available for screening or home video. Anyone to write to about that? Fox? Maybe a letter campaign. It looks like it's right up there with OH, MR. PORTER! and ASK A POLICEMAN. I'll keep checking your site and the other links for news on this neglected gem.

As I say, I hope Will Hay's fame and fun spread over here as is deserved. And more than ever right now, we can use some laughter. Thanks for your great site. Best wishes, Larry Blamire Los Angeles, CA

Yes, it's a shame that Where's That Fire isn't available. I wish something could be sorted out, as it's one of the best films.