Two television soundtracks from the BBC's memorable series Hancock's Half Hour by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson starring Tony Hancock, Sid James and John Le Mesurier. In The Lift, Hancock gets stuck in a lift at the BBC with eight other people. It's gone midnight, the building is empty and Hancock won't stop talking. In Twelve Angry Men, Hancock is the foreman of a jury and tries to convince the jurors that the man on trial is innocent...

Hancock: The Lift / Twelve Angry Men is another "Vintage Beeb" release - a series which offers classic albums that were originally available as BBC LPs and are now on CD for the first time. This release was originally available to buy on LP in 1976, and contains two classic recordings - the TV series versions of The Lift and Twelve Angry Men.

While it mentions on the back of the CD sleeve that "due to the age of the source material, the sound quality may vary" I was still surprised at how poor the audio quality to the opening to The Lift was. The volume kept going up and down to the point where it was extremely distracting. However, once that settled down, the rest of the recording while still of below average sound quality (and in mono, obviously) was just about listenable.

While this is indeed classic comedy, unfortunately the sound quality is a little too uneven to recommend this. However, for Hancock completists this will be an essential purchase.

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Darren Rea