Sunday Sunday- oh bliss or just another Tony Hancock day.

Sunday- oh bliss or just another Tony Hancock day.

OK. It's the last Sunday of January and you're all ready to settle down for the Sunday roast with the family, a quick jog, a leisurely stroll with the dogs, tennis in the rain, a couple of pints in the local and then a day devoted to quiet contemplation.

In the living room the clock ticks away in the most aristocratic fashion, dad slumps in his chair with a relieved sigh, the dogs scurry around the family home and the children groan almost resignedly about the school homework. Mum meanwhile runs in and out of the kitchen like an Olympic athlete and all of the family charge up and down the stairs a thousand times searching for something. Sundays have always been like this. It is a weekly Sunday occurrence.

And yet the question has to be asked. Is this another Tony Hancock Sunday or are we all going to drive down to the furniture store and finally buy the carpet and sofa we'd been promising ourselves for ages? Maybe we'll take that long drive down to the country and that glorious spot next to the river. This is what Sundays are all about and it's hard to imagine what the likes of Tony Hancock would have made of today's non-stop, 24/7 society.

Hancock was one of Britain's funniest of all comics and there is something about Sunday that he never really warmed to. Hancock, that hang dog faced comedian, famed for his sour face and that permanent air of misery, would probably have despaired of the 21st century. The chances are that he would have taken one look at Sid James face and sulked for the rest of the day anyway regardless of the century.

Both Hancock and Sid James will always be remembered for that celebrated Hancock Half Hour episode which revolved solely around Sundays. Poor old Hancock. He didn't stand a chance. Maybe he had a premonition that Sundays were going to be a complete waste of time. And so it was that he and Sid James did what they could to while away the hours, enduring through gritted teeth the sheer monotony of their Sunday.

There was Hancock, all drooping chin, a lost and desolate figure who had probably come to the conclusion that Sundays should never have been invented. For what must have seemed a lifetime, Hancock sat at the kitchen table, tapping his fingers restlessly on the table, staring vacantly into the middle distance and was almost inconsolable. Every so often he would sigh and then sigh again just to prove that it wasn't an illusion. Before we knew it depression had set in and Hancock began to complain with that rather sad and lugubrious face almost sagging into the Sunday gravy.

Then there was Sid James. James had already established himself in the affections of the British public with those hilarious Carry On capers with Kenneth Williams and company. James, another grim faced funny man who made a career out of a silly cackling laugh, sat next to Hancock with a heavy heart and what looked like accumulated anger. Then both men just aired their public grievances and suffered in silence. It is TV comedy at its most polished and refined, a masterclass of timing.

Suddenly Tony keeps bothering and pestering Sid because there's nothing to do and the day is interminably long. Tony then launches into an impassioned rant about the slowness and general inactivity of Sunday. Hancock insists that there has to be something to occupy his time. There had to be something better than Family Favourites on the radio and the church service across the road.

Sid, of course keeps leafing through the News of the World Sunday newspaper for gossip and scandal but only finds Harold Macmillan on Page 2 with all his homespun political philosophies. The world, according to Hancock, is falling apart and will shortly disappear with the Test Card. Sid, he feels. has to be told. Britain is just staggering from one Suez crisis to another. Bread and milk have gone up again and the British economy is in danger of sinking beneath the waves.

Still. it's hard to believe that things could have got any worse for both Tony Hancock and Sid James and besides we're in the 21st century and there are loads of things to do on a Sunday now. There are all kinds of social diversions and distractions now. Supermarkets, garden centres and furniture stores are open from early Sunday morning until the fading hours of Sunday afternoon. Sunday has all those unbroken continuities and familiarities that Sunday has always been associated with but now they've been joined by new novelties, stimulating electronic gadgets and high tech games.

Now Sunday has arrived again. Millwall are playing Watford in the FA Cup, football is now played on a Sunday which would have been regarded as sacrosanct and forbidden over 50 years ago and everybody is doing something on a Sunday. How drab and dreary life must have been for Messrs Hancock and James and yet how thankful we are for the joys of modern technology. Time to catch up on those e-mails. Have a good Sunday everybody.