Will Hay

Columnist and historian Simon Heffer's essays, celebrate leading comic film actors of early British film.

With films such as Oh! Mr Porter, Boys Will Be Boys and The Goose Steps Out, Will Hay was, by popular consent, the greatest comic actor in films of the 1930s and '40s.

Simon traces the rise to fame of this music hall star, who became best known for his anti-authoritarian roles, whether playing a policeman, a fireman, a stationmaster, a barrister, a professor, or - perhaps most famously - an incompetent and morally dubious schoolmaster.

Producer: Beaty Rubens

First broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in April 2015.