London: Robson Books, 2002

8vo, pp. 172. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Illustrated dustwrapper. A fine copy in a fine dustwrapper.

First edition, INSCRIBED BY ANTROBUS TO RAY GALTON: 'To Ray, may we extend our days of laughter into a golden future....and then what? Leave the lights on nurse.... Love John Antrobus'.

Ray Galton [1930-2018] was half of the peerless comedy writing duo Galton and Simpson, creators of Hancock's Half Hour and Steptoe and Son, and inventors of the modern sitcom. After Alan Simpson's retirement, Ray Galton struck up a working partnership with John Antrobus, the co-writer with Spike Milligan of The Bed-Sitting Room (1963) which was filmed in 1969 with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Ralph Richardson, Marty Feldman, Rita Tushingham, Arthur Lowe, Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan......everyone, really. Together, Galton and Antrobus put Steptoe and Son on stage with their play Murder in Oil Drum Lane (2005) -- and in 1987 had staged another joint effort, the unimprovably titled When Did You Last See Your Trousers?)

A fine copy, and an excellent association.