The end of Itma comes as something like a national
calamity. frhe death of the Prime Minister would obviously be a far greater 'disaster than the death of Mr. Tommy Handley, but there are millions of people in this country who would not so regard it. Mr. • Churchill, no doubt, was a greater national institution than Mr.
andley—in war-time—but no present Cabinet Minister is. Itma d Tommy Handley have been unique in the history of broadcasting
this country, and the hold they established over an audience stimated at twenty millions is in its way a social phenomenon. Someone, I suppose, some day will analyse, and explain to the general satisfaction, the appeal the special type of Itma humour made to astonishingly different classes of listeners. Tommy Handley's undefinable but pervasive personality had of course a great deal to do with it ; but would Mr. Handley without the script-writer have )3een much more effective than the script-writer without Mr. pandley ? The fact is that Itma was the fruit of a remarkably 'successful partnership—so successful that Mr. Kavanagh, though rko doubt he could go on writing as good scripts as ever, refuses to contemplate the possibility of Itma continuing now that r that man" has gone. Of course he is right. Tommy Handley _could ask no greater tribute.
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