The extraordinary and ultimately tragic story of a man whom many still regard as Britain's greatest ever comedian has been covered by other writers and this work is not an attempt to replicate that, instead this book explores the connection between the man himself, Tony Hancock, and his adopted home town of Bournemouth and examines how the people he met and the experiences he underwent all came together to fashion him into the performer he became using a blend of geography, social history and show business. Almost the whole of his childhood and early youth was spent in hostelry-type accommodation where, in his parents' pub and later hotel, people from the world of show business made up their core clientele. Tony's father Jack, himself a talented entertainer, personally played host to many celebrities returning from their shows in the town and young Tony was much influenced by this. His homes unconsciously became the perfect training ground for the observation of the human foibles and idiosyncrasies which contributed to and influenced the kind of comedy that he and his legendary writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, would later fashion with "Hancock's Half Hour"