High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Anthony John "Tony" Hancock (12 May 1924 ? 24 June 1968) was a British actor and comedian. Hancock was born in Southam Road, Hall Green, Birmingham, England,[1] but from the age of three was brought up in Bournemouth, where his father, John Hancock, who ran the Railway Hotel in Holdenhurst Road, worked as a comedian and entertainer. After his father's death in 1934, Tony and his brothers lived with their mother and stepfather at a small hotel then called The Durlston Court (now renamed The Quality Hotel). He attended Durlston Court Preparatory School, a boarding school at Durlston in Swanage (moved during World War II and now located in Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire [2]) and Bradfield College in Reading, but left school at the age of fifteen.