Vale: Ray Galton

British screenwriter Ray Galton, best known for co-creating Steptoe & Son and Hancock’s Half Hour, has died aged 88.

Galton (pictured left) died peacefully on Friday night after a “long and heartbreaking battle with dementia”, his family said.

Together with the late Alan Simpson, who died in February last year, the duo created Hancock’s Half Hour, which ran from 1954 to 1961, first on radio and later on television.

The duo also went on to create Steptoe and Son, the squabbling father-and-son rag-and-bone men. The show, starring Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell, ran for eight seasons until 1974. At its peak, it commanded an audience of 28 million viewers.

In 1997 he said, “Finding the plots used to be a lot easier for me than the writing. Nowadays, I find the ideas much more difficult. Practically everything has been done.”

Source: The Guardian