Tom Sloan

Thomas James Harman Sloan (14 October 1919 – 13 May 1970) was a British television executive. He was the BBC's Head of Light Entertainment in the 1960s.

Early life Sloan was born in Hertfordshire, England, the son of a Scottish Free Church Minister, and educated at Dulwich College. He entered the BBC Sound Effects Department in 1939, but left at the start of World War II to serve in the Royal Artillery throughout the war. One of his first tasks was to attempt to hold on to one of the BBC's biggest stars of the time, Tony Hancock. After he failed to persuade Hancock to sign a golden handcuffs deal designed to prevent him defecting to ITV or the cinema, he wrote a confidential memo to the BBC Controller of Programmes on 13 April 1962, stating "Hancock is a moody perfectionist with a great interest in money and no sense of loyalty to the corporation". He added that nothing short of handing over entire "production control" to Hancock and paying him an unprecedented £150,000 – the equivalent of £2m today – for a further 13 episodes of his TV sitcom would be enough to persuade him to stay with the BBC. In the autumn of 1961 he approached Hancock's writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, with the idea of a series called Comedy Playhouse. He had ten half-hour slots and asked them to fill them with anything they wanted, insisting only that his title of Comedy Playhouse be used. The fourth episode of the series, broadcast on 5 January 1962, was entitled The Offer and starred Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell as Harold and Albert Steptoe. Sloan badgered Galton and Simpson to write a series of Steptoe and Son episodes, It was later said that Sloan attempted to invert the BBC's founding principles of "education, information and entertainment", giving priority to entertainment, followed by information and education. This was considered acceptable because entertainment, to him, meant not only what was cheerfully relaxing but also what was vigorous, thoughtful, stimulating and downright disturbing. He found the writers and the stars to provide and embody what he wanted, and created a space and audience for them. He was succeeded by Bill Cotton. A memorial service was held in St Martin-in-the-Fields in the City of Westminster, London on Tuesday 23 June 1970. Harry Secombe read the lesson and Huw Wheldon (managing director of BBC Television) gave the address.